Objectified

On Tuesday night I went along to to the DCA's screening of Objectified. Billed as Helvetica the sequel, Objectified is the follow up film by Gary Hustwit in his design trilogy.

I must say that I enjoyed this documentary and appreciated the way it looked at how designers design the seemingly unimportant things that we may dismiss as design. Their example being at one point garden shearers. I myself would have simply dismissed these objects as the subject of design through the idea that they arent glamourous or impressive to look at in any way but are simply a functionaly device for a seemingly unimportant task. But then again who else would create these things if it wasn't a designer. I probably had the same mind set as a lot of people in thinking that certain things were just made and did not consider design at all. However when you look around every single thing that you see has been designed in one way or another, may it have the complexity of a laptop or the simpleness of a tooth pick, likewise at one point someone has had to have made a decision on the aesthetics, ergonomics etc. and not just simply start producing.

We as designers have such a huge responsibility these days to produce objects that do not simply serve their purpose but have multiple functions, shelf lives, safe environmental properties, all that have such a large baring on the success of the product. Designers of the past perhaps didn't have these worries but this is the future of design now and is something that isn't going to change. One of the points that was brought up in Objectified that particularly struck a chord with me was made by Karim Rashid, he was talking about the life of products and that if their only intended to last for, say, 11 months then why are they built to last forever. This got me thinking surely there must be a way to make either design last or make it degradable. The latter seems to be the more plausible as people are simply too interested in new things. Everyone wants the newest laptop or phone or iPod whereas we could easily still be using the same one from 3 years ago perfectly well. The wants of the people are not going to change so it is us that will have to instigate a change perhaps starting small and working our way up.

The film raises a great number of discussion points and to me goes a lot deeper than the previous film on Helvetica. The discussion on multifunctional design, I thought was the most interesting and thought provoking area of the film and is definitely something that I feel in the near future will definitely be the main factor in not only my work in design but all designers work.