slow design

Since the start of the industrial revolution more than 200 years ago the mentality has been to make more products accessible to everyone by making them faster and cheaper with the end goal really being to maximize profits for companies. It’s simple economics, the more people you can sell something to the more money you can make. Although this “democratization of design” has made it possible for everyone to own the basic products and appliances they need in order to be comfortable in the modern world, the sacrifice of both quality of design and quality of manufacture in order to bring the price point down has had a devastating effect on our environment as well as the relationships we have with the objects and environments around us. The problem stems from the consumerist culture that we live in where what we have is never enough and we are made to think that we need this year’s greatest product in order to be happy. This mentality has resulted in people buying new versions of objects that they already own because “it’s brand new” and throwing their old stuff in the trash. I believe that people do this because they don’t have any emotional connection to the mundane mass-produced objects around them so they have no problem getting rid of it and replacing it with another soulless object that they think will be better than the last. I have been a big fan of products that have a concept, meaning, or a story behind them for a couple of years now and only recently did I find that this kind of design has a name, slow design.

The slow design movement is a young one that has only solidified into its current state over the past five years. Slow design is not about how long it takes to design something but rather it is a design philosophy that is in sync with the other “slow” movements like the slow food movement. Slow design advocates for the design of objects, spaces, and images in a way that reduces the “human, economic, industrial and urban recourse metabolism” (slowdesign.org). The slow design movement is essentially a dramatic shift from the consumerist society that we live in. They believe that the focus of design should be repositioned on “individual, socio-cultural and environmental well being” (slowdesign.org). Probably the best examples of slow design have come from the Dutch design collective Droog Design. Droog’s work often challenges the notions of what products are supposed to be or do and their objects oftentimes engage the user in a dialogue that creates a unique experience for the user. One piece in particular is the “come a little bit closer bench” by Nina Farkuche that is designed to encourage social interaction between strangers sitting on the bench. It is a simple steel frame with a bed of marbles as the top with discs that you sit on. Because the marbles allow you to move around the bench encourages you to bump into strangers hopefully striking up a conversation in the process. Another example is the “Chair Prosthesis” kits by 5.5 Designers, which saves old and broken chairs by repairing them with bright green parts that are adaptable to any chair. Instead of throwing the furniture to the dump it takes on new life and a new personality with the prosthesis, thus reducing the consumption of resources which slow design pushes for.

Slow design may not be the most practical design solution for the global economy but I think that applying slow design’s principles in the design process is an important step in minimizing our impact on the environment. For the past 50 years we have been living in a consumer economy where design is driven by making things look really nice in order to appeal to the consumer on the visceral level, which is the level that most consumers respond to. On a smaller level design has also been focusing on making object work better, which is a great thing to strive for in design but sometimes a well functioning objects lack style and aesthetic beauty. I believe that a truly great design has to engage the user on the visceral level and perform its specified function well, but it also must engage the user on an emotional level and that is what’s missing in design now that slow design is advocating for. Most good examples of emotionally engaging design is coming from the avant garde and is inaccessible to most people due to either price or distribution. Designers need to apply the same kind of ingenuity that the avant garde use and wrap those ideas into products that can be accessed by lots of people. However, this action cannot result in the mass production of millions of cheap products with a diluted version of a good idea because that would be contradictory to the principles of slow design. I, as well as the slow design movement, advocate for small the medium batch production products that are preferably made locally so that communities can rally around local design and industry like they use to. Obviously there are many hurdles to achieving these goals in the global economy that we live in today but applying the slow design principles in design is a great step in the right direction to changing the overall consumerist culture of this country.

As a society we no longer cherish the majority of our belongings because they are the product of a consumerist design culture that is driven by low price points in order to maximize profits. This has resulted in consumption on a massive scale that is filling up our landfills and depleting our natural resources and it needs to stop now. By applying the principles of slow design we can start to change the mentality of the consumer from one of wanting the newest and flashiest thing the wanting the most interesting and emotionally engaging object that will provide them with a lifetime of experience. We must do this now or the state of our environment will only get worse.


slowdesign.org
slowlab.org
droog.com
cinqcinqdesigners.com

Chairs

During my short career as a designer I have always been weary of functionalism as a design philosophy yet when I design I find myself consciously following the functionalist principles. I believe that the functionalist principles are good to take into account while designing as they are very practical and will lead to products that work but I have been weary of them because when I hear functionalism I just think of boring generic products that have been pared down to their essentials and are void of any cultural reference. The history of the rise of functionalist principles is interesting because it was a way of designing products to combat the amount of neo-classically influenced crap that was being produced in the 19th century. Yet as time progressed and the functionalist principles were adopted as the norm for designing something was lost, culture. With every functionalist object existing only to perform a task and with an aesthetic to match you start to see objects starting to all look the same, this phenomenon is similar to the rise of the international style in architecture. With the perfection of mass-production more and more of the same objects are being produced with nothing unique of special about them. We can see that although the functionalist principles were created with the best of intentions the result is that functionalist designs have become what they were created to combat. I believe the big thing that the functionalist manifesto is lacking is the recognition of culture as an important part of product design. We can see a resurgence of cultural references in product design within the past 15 years as a way of feeding our desire to experience something other than the sterile styling of functionalist design.

Lighting

With this assignment I focused on how an object reflects the changes in the culture and technical innovation of the times. With the chandelier as my case study I found how the aesthetic, purpose and meaning of a chandelier changed over time. In the beginning the chandelier evolved as a better way to disperse light throughout a room. It then evolved as a symbol of status and great wealth with the addition of crystals, which in addition to being visually amazing disperses light through out a room better than normal candle chandeliers. With the onset of the industrial revolution and the electrification of the West the chandelier started to come in many different styles and became accessible to a greater number of people. Finally with the chandelier becoming an ordinary object accessible to the masses it became the subject of artists and designers and you start to see visually and conceptually beautiful and strange creations emerge. Most every object with a history follows a similar story. It is created out of necessity, it is then refined and improved with technical innovations, it becomes mass produced in many different styles for the masses, then it becomes the subject of art and design. This timeline of objects closely follows and reflects what was going on in the world at that time. It is important to look at objects with their historical context in mind because you can gain a greater understanding of how that object came to be.

The passed

In this assignment regarding "the passed" I decided to talk about avant garde design. I was interested in the idea that avant garde design is cutting edge and always ahead of its time, yet with every avant garde movement it is eventually replaced by a newer and more radical avant garde and the first passes away into history. It seems that the very nature of avant garde design is that it is doomed to fade away only to be reborn in a new incarnation. The life cycle of an avant garde movement is similar to that of a new hit product. First it arrives on the scene and it's like nothing anyone has seen before. It becomes an instant hit with the art crowd and it begins to grow from there. Soon non-design people start noticing the style as it is commercialized and dumbed down by big companies. Soon what was once avant garde and radical has become ordinary and familiar and people start looking for the next new thing. And so that avant garde movement dies as another one rises to replace it only to fall prey to the syclical cycle that is avant garde design. This idea is illustrated in the timeline below by the Eames LCW. When that arrived on the market it was the most refined and advanced use of bent laminated wood that anyone had seen and it became an instant classic. Now that that technology and aesthetic vernacular has been adopted by thousands of designers and companies bent laminated chairs, which were at first a product of avant garde design, have become ordinary. Only time will tell if this pattern with avant garde design will continue. Currently conceptual design is the new avant garde and it has been going strong for about 15 years. If history is any clue that means that conceptual design is soon to be replaced by a new avant garde movement and conceptual design will join the ranks of the passed avant garde movements like Art Nouveau and The Bauhaus.