[These are based on notes taken during the event, but should not be directly cited.]
The Blueprint Sessions is Blueprint magazine’s first venture in to awards, and cover interior design, architecture, product and graphic design. They are organised over four events at the RSA in London, with the audience submitting a ballot at the end of the evening after advocates had made the case for each finalist. For the product design awards, held on Monday 23 February, they were Tord Boontje (advocated by product designers Carl Clerkin and Will Warren).
Richard Seymour chaired the event and noted that the awards were not just about “do I like what I see” but “who has achieved the most in the last year”, their contribution to the design industry, boosting the importance and understanding of design, including its ability to “speak to manufacturing” (“let’s not shy away from it, design is a commercial act” he challenged). All these designers start from what people want.
Advocating Tord Boontje Carl Clerkin and Will Warren observed that he was good at creating new products before people knew they wanted them, and that his designs lead the fashion, and are subsequently imitated by mass retailers. One example of his work they showed was a network of lights that were computer numerical controlled (CNC) to create flower shapes.
The Apple design team in general and Jonathan Ive in particular were advocated by Stephen Fry, who although noting that “I am not someone from the design world” showed greater understanding of product design than many commentators in this area.
Elaborating the background to Ive’s work he observed that the CPU is the most important feature of our lives in terms of products. No one ever had at their disposal such power, and access to people and ideas. Almost every major advance in home computing had been made by Apple, or appeared first on the Macintosh. Ive’s team, he argued, has created design that pleased the shareholders. (Later he observed that only three in every 100 computers sold is an Apple.)
His understanding of product design was illustrated by his comparison of the iMac and a Bugatti, where the functional elements such as the hood were both styled and aerodynamic. On the iPod he referred to the “shameless glamour of the mirrored backside”, and of the iPod Mini said “it is something you just drool about... It is like a stiffy-test... Beyond your intellectual reach”.
Discussing the G5 desktop he noted Ive’s move from his ‘toilet phase’ (porcelain-like finishes) to his ‘nutmeg grater-cum-Remington shaver foil phase’. It is as if they are bench-machined prototypes that you show the boss [and then go straight intp manufacturing].
More broadly he noted these products’ “fitness to culture from which they spring”, and the instant imitations they inspire.
Marcel Wanders was advocated by Louise-Anne Comeau, who began arguing that we should celebrate Wanders not for his objects, but for his approach. “He starts with the ambition to create an emotion, a lasting touch, rather than a lasting object”. He “doesn’t seek to innovate, but to sit back and listen”, continuously asking ‘Why?’ And ‘Why not?’
He believes that what objects need are new connections, and that designs require someone’s [action] to complete a process. They are a beginning and not an end. In one project she showed his investigations into the nature of glass, in which he had asked ‘Why does something that is fluid so rarely feel fluid?’.
He also asks ‘What is really design, or good design?’ and ‘Why does [taste] change between generations?’.
Seymour facilitated a panel discussion, initially asking if it is even possible to even compare these people’s work. Marcel appears like Damien Hirst compared to the Apple team, said Fry, but they both address the same issues of aesthetics, delight, and sensuousness – “something you want to touch, stroke, and lick”.
Are beautiful things based on nature?, speculated Seymour. Fry contended that this wasn’t the case, and that we put our stamp on [things from nature]. We don’t just re-order them but are engaged in “firing them in the crucible of not just our imagination but our factories” [many of his references were to pottery]. This is what the Enlightenment and humanism is all about. Out-doing God and saying to him ‘we’ll show you!’.
The panel also discussed design vs craft, meta-products (Seymour asking “how much delight can we get from things that aren’t physical”), and the degree to which design was “about creating an emotional bond, the enduring delight of using the object”. Fry noted that some older cars have non-functional beauty, and that sometimes beauty is functional. He speculated about the possibility of designing things that had redundancy [though he didn’t use this term], which could be damaged but continue working at some level.
In the open discussion, Vicky Richardson [who shortly takes up the editorship of Blueprint] asked whether Ive could be counterposed to the other designers as he is about the future, where the other designers were about reflection, and imperfections in society. Louise-Anne noted that you can look at progress in many ways, not just increased functionality.
Nico Macdonald noted that we should learn from what designers do right, and wrong. For instance the button mouse is a mistake. The original mouse had three buttons, probably one too many, but two button is better for interaction. We should be realistic about Apple. He added that aesthetics is becoming more important, and helps usability, as Psychology of Everyday Things author Don Norman notes in his new book [Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things]. Is there a danger of designers creating comfort blankets for people?, he asked. He also advocated more emphasis on interaction design, separately or as an element of product design, and for the design of systems (noting Syemour’s enquiry about how much delight can we get from things that aren’t physical). This kind of design is what makes the iPod-iTunes-iTunes store combination so successful, and is the key to [Transport for London’s] Oyster card. In response Seymour noted that you can’t separate interaction design from objects. On the subject of ‘comfort blankets’ he challenged that “if this is childhood, give me childhood”.
Richard Eisermann [Design Council Director of Design and Innovation] noted that there is no such thing as a perfection in the future. Services can’t be embodied without objects: the Oyster card is still key to a physical system. It is only then that we get to talk about sustainability.
Seymour concluded that the world was getting increasingly dislocated and [complex], and that we are as close to the Renaissance as we have been [comment not properly recorded].
Winners of all the Blueprint Sessions awards will be announced later this week.
Comments