ART SMART – EVERYTHING IS BY DESIGN

ART SMART By Design Everything is

The ubiquity of design is inescapable, almost object you touch has been ‘designed’ from the door handle to your dinner plate, to your toaster, car, vacuum cleaner, pen or pencil and, yes, the mousetrap. Toby Preston looks at some of the industry’s best practitioners.

Australian designer Marc Newson designed the aptly titled Lockheed Lounge in the mid eighties and ended up producing ten versions of the sinuous aluminium and fibreglass seat. It wet on to become the world’s most expensive lounge after one was sold in London in 2015 for AU$4,689,585. One would need a nice lie down after paying that sort of dough.

PICTURE: 4starclassics.com It’s a given that the chair you may be sitting in while reading this was designed by someone, quite likely it was an anonymous employee working for a furniture manufacturer in China, it may be plastic, or timber or steel, if it has a cushion that too was ‘designed’ and manufactured to fit, the fabric was also designed, in both its composition and weaving as well as any pattern or colour and of course the zipper. Someone somewhere had to think about and decide on all aspects of its creation, yet we rarely ever give the ubiquity of industrial design any thought unless the item is designated as a ‘designer’ object – bag, chair, recliner or desk lamp or maybe because it is not fit for purpose. There is just a simple acceptance that objects exist.

But they don’t exist in a vacuum (more on that later) they have to be created from any number of materials and for any number of purposes and the UX or ‘user experience’ is increasingly something manufactures think about a lot, from websites to laptops, cars to remote control units, phones to fridges, it’s design that distinguishes one object from another and can give the manufacturer a competitive edge or a reason to charge more for a ‘label’ rather than a generic item.

While often unsung there are many others whose work is acknowledged as ground-breaking and beautiful, and what’s not to like about a thing of beauty?•

Opposite page top: The humble mousetrap was first patented by William C. Hooker from Illinois in 1894, although the one we are most familiar with was designed by a British inventor, James Henry Atkinson and patented as the ‘Little Nipper’ in 1898. The Patent Office has issued patents for more than 4,400 mousetraps most of which have slipped into oblivion. Opposite page below: The sublime Alfa Romeo GTV 2000 (1971-1977) designed Giorgetto Giugiaro at Bertone originally as the Giulia Sprint GT in 1963. The cars proportions and balance of glass and metal, and the flat grille with incorporated headlamps were groundbreaking styling features for the era. Giugiaro was named Car Designer of the Century in 1999 but his achievements ranged across many areas of industrial design from watches to tractors, motorcycles to cameras for Nikon and the occasional firearm as in the Beretta U22 Neos, below.

Dieter Rams declared good design: • Is innovative • Makes a product useful • Is aesthetic • Makes a product understandable • Is unobtrusive

Left: If any contemporary company is renowned for its design ethos, Apple would be ranked near or at the top of that list. Apple’s design guru for 27 years until his resignation in 2019 was Sir Jonathan Paul ‘Jony’ Ive. His design credo followed that of the Bauhaus design tradition: ‘form follows function’ and ‘less is more’. His designs have been described as integral to the successes of Apple, which has went on to become the world’s largest information technology company by revenue and largest company in the world by market capitalisation. Jony himself did alright too, according to the Sunday Times Rich List he is now worth £192 million. He is also credited with having collaborated with Norman Foster in the design of Apple Park, Apple’s spectacular headquarters in Cupertino, California.

Left: The Museum of Modern Art has seen fit to include a vacuum cleaner among its exhibits because this particular appliance was designed by famed British designer Sir James Dyson – another knight of the realm in design and another member of the rich list, so there’s money in good design. This is known as the Dual Cyclone Vacuum Cleaner – model DC02 created in 1994. Apart from vacuum cleaners Dyson has also designed and produced hand dryers (the Airblade), hair dryers, a fan without any external blades, a very stylish desk light and more. Dyson is quoted as finding failure a positive contributor to his inventions have made 5,127 prototypes of the cleaner before perfecting it. Right: Classic minimalist E-1027 side table designed by Eileen Gray the Irish architect and furniture designer in 1927 and still going strong. It was designed for her cuboid house of the same name near Monaco which was reputedly often stayed in by Le Corbusier who was accused of having vandalised the property by covering its walls with Cubist murals of naked women which was in direct contravention of Gray’s wish that the house be free of any decoration. Later the house suffered an even more destructive fate as German soldiers used the walls for target practice during WWII. Not all great design is revered equally. Below left : German designer Dieter Rams’ 1987 calculator for the Braun company. Below right: Philippe Stark’s iconic Juicy for Alessi. Stark ranged widely across many industrial design fields from furniture to boats – he designed Steve Jobs yacht Venus which was launched in 2012. He also designed the gorgeous Moto 6,5 for the Aprilia motor cycle company as well as restaurants and hotels along with office equipment and tableware.

• Is honest • Is long-lasting • Is thorough down to the last detail • Is environmentally friendly • Involves as little design as possible.