Objectified

The film Objectified by Gary Hustwit documents the design of every-day objects from conceptualization by designers, to industrial manufacturing, and into our lives. The movie documents the objects that surround us from toothpicks to chairs to automobiles. The movie weaves form and content through designer conversations about their designs and the actual process of the design creation as well as views of the objects as they are in our daily lives. Overall, Hustwit is suggesting that the form and content of an object follow the object’s function in our daily lives and it is up to the designer to design for functionality. This idea is apparent through the ideas and processes of the designers as they create objects for our daily lives.

The film opens with the quote, “When you see an object, you make assumptions about that object in seconds”. These assumptions guide us through the object world, but sometimes these assumptions are misleading. Take for example the Japanese Toothpick, it is a design that is more culturally relevant than commercially understood. Originally, when I happened upon the toothpick I just thought that the etchings at the top were decorative. However, in Japanese culture this top is meant to be broken at the etchings when the toothpick has been used (a way to inform others it is used) or the broken piece can be utilized as a rest for a toothpick intended to be used over time. I was unable to see the etching as functional because of the functional purpose of the tiny object already. This designer goes on to quote Henry Ford in saying that objects have “stories” and as consumers we just have to “know how to read” them. In the case of the toothpick, I didn’t know how to read the story of the toothpick; I read it in terms of aesthetics rather than usefulness.

The next phase of the video involves form and function. The video states that, “Form is nothing like function…form follows function”. This idea suggests that the content of an object can be discerned to some degree by the form that the object takes. We wouldn’t look at the form of an alarm clock (with four legs and a square form holding the clock) and start throwing it like it had the form of a Frisbee. Design involves this search for the appropriate form of a certain function. A good design meets the needs of people without having “something (that) isn’t doing something” ruining the form. If there is no functional reason for something to be a part of the design then it should not be taking the space. A Frisbee would not have an alarm clock built on it because playing Frisbee is for leisure time or competition neither of which require and alarm clock to function.

The video goes on to stress the importance of looking beyond today into more sustainable forms when thinking of design. Good design in the video is, “About what is going to happen, not what has”. Good design is just as much about the aesthetic as it is about progress and honesty. Being sustainable and environmentally friendly are just as important to design as being minimal or relative to you. “Old designs end up in the trash for new designs”, is a quote plaguing contemporary designers. The video asks why we still build permanently today when we know what will happen at the end of a design. He suggests that contemporary design has an obligation to be more responsible with the course taken for designs in order to preserve the future.

Hustwit is showing us the people involved in design from the processes to the consumers. It is showing us the designers and the process they implement to achieve the final product of their designs. Likewise he is showing us that consumers are the people who receive and test design placing it back onto the path of further re-invention and re-designing. Hustwit is also commenting on what it is that design can be from an object to a process. Design can be an idea or a prototype as well as depictive of a consumer or memory. Design can be the original or even the result of re-working the original because through every object there is a story, through every design there is an object. Design is a dialogue between object, designer, process, and consumer that can be dropped or picked up over and over again.

Image above borrowed from Google images search:

http://www.typeneu.com/v2/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/objectified.jpg