On the Fast Company blog, Valerie Casey has written a deliberately provocative piece about the evolution (or lack thereof) of product design aesthetics over the past decade. Having recently judged the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), she observes a striking degree of stylistic continuity across a diverse range of objects, which is demonstrated via a series of humorous, if misleading juxtapositions. While culture and business have changed dramatically in ten years, award-winning product design has apparently not. Concluding, she writes:
Design is at an inflection point. We are playing a more significant role in industry and policy. Now our challenge is how to describe our value. We need to adapt to our current role in the world, as problem-solvers not stylists, as collaborators not lone inventors. We need to represent and celebrate what design actually does, not the way it used to look.
This strikes me as somewhat odd, in that she first expresses a desire for more dramatic stylistic evolution, and then concludes by disparaging style as a worthy pursuit at all. So, which is it? One would hope that the judges—including Ms. Casey—considered these products from a broader point of view, and determined the awards based on concept, relevance and execution.
BusinessWeek, who co-sponsored the competition, also featured the awards prominently on their web site. The coverage included a short article on key trends and the judging process along with a picture gallery of all 150 winners. Helen Walters writes:
Reflecting the scope and reach of the design discipline itself, awards were given to everything from sleek TVs and sharp-looking computer monitors to more creative concepts with barely a toehold in reality. But this year, particular credit was given to designers who showed they had truly considered a project in the wider context of the world at large.
And quoting Claudia Kotchka, another of the judges and former head of design at Procter & Gamble, Walters continues: “Design is not just about making things pretty. Designers are about making the world a better place.”
So, if the judges debated over three scorching days about how these products might make the world a better place (despite aesthetics)—and selected the winners accordingly—isn’t there a disconnect here? For me, the first issue is the “sleek TVs and sharp-looking computer monitors.” How exactly does a new Samsung television make the world a better place? And why does Bruce Nussbaum sensationalize the Samsung products on his blog (Samsung beats Apple…) rather than highlight the Nike Trash Talk shoe—a compelling innovation that won best in show?
As usual, the business-turned-design press wants to have it both ways. They want to hype innovation and diminish aesthetics while failing to provide a deeper critical perspective along with the obligatory slide show, which only serves to support the stylistic outcome of the awards.
The second issue—and the real problem—is that the design profession has been stuck in our version of Plato’s cave for some time now. And we have apparently locked up the journalists with us. Addicted to imagery, we consume page after page of thumbnails, year after year. The images are too small to make out much—but we see enough to form our own reality, which in turn is reinforced by our tribal beliefs and made more vivid by each successive wave of images. Our view of good design and its visual signifiers is not based on actual artifacts or experiences, but rather a series of vague simulations. If we’re going to change the world, we might want to try living in it. We could start by giving up awards. Then, we should have a more substantial conversation about what really makes something good.