Most Americans, even if they haven't been to a museum in years, can tell you the name of a painter, maybe even the name of a painter who is still alive, but few can name an industrial designer. Not only have American industrial designers suffered general anonymity in the world's largest industrial power, but American-designed products have often been thought to lack the grace and elegance of similar objects from Europe and Japan. Now, as the demand for attractive, functional, and efficient products in this country is rising, Americans designers are gaining a new visibility and issuing a new challenge to American manufacturers.
Postindustrial
The term industrial design may call to mind robotics, sports cars from Ferrari, or cold, minimalist German kitchen appliances, but there's very little produced in industrialized countries today that has not been designed by someone, though it may appear otherwise. But even specialists in the field can be confounded when asked to define just what an industrial designer is. One of those specialists is Hugh Aldersey-Williams, author of New American Design: Products and Graphics for a Post-Industrial Age, which presents a selection of U.S. products that integrate new advances in technology into products consumers might use everyday. "Industrial design has always been an unfortunate misnomer," says Aldersey-Williams. "We're living in a society that we call 'postindustrial,' and we're concerned with products that are not simply the cheapest things to come out of a mass manufacturing production line in the greatest possible number in the shortest possible time. We're talking about the reintroduction of certain crafted elements to product design, and we're talking about the way to reintroduce craft in combination with flexible manufacturing systems and automated assembly."
A recent show of new American design at the National Arts Club in New York showed just how diverse the field of industrial design can be, accommodating everyone from colorists and stylists to what once were called investors. Among the objects displayed were automobile prototypes, lawn sprinklers, architecturally crafted furniture, surgical equipment, and kitchen appliances.
In spite of this diversity, American design is coming under fire, at a time when awareness of design among laymen seems to be on the rise.
A year ago a Business Week cover story announced the rediscovery of design in the United States, but commentators in the New York Times and other publications decried a widening "design gap," warning that if the disadvantages were allowed to continue, inferior American-made goods would not compete effectively in a global marketplace, further postponing the resolution of the nation's huge budget deficit.
It is sometimes charged that Americans don't design as well as the Europeans and Japanese, or that American firms don't place enough value on product design to stand up to their competitors. And in recent years, as companies are purchased and merged, designers charge that the design departments are the first targeted for shrinkage or elimination.
Rita Sue Siegel, an industrial designer by training who operates a midtown Manhattan design employment agency with a staff of nineteen, concedes that business may have slowed
...
Read Full Article
|
