Design Objectified

*Image credited below

Objectified, a documentary film by Gary Hustwit is about the ideas, processes and people behind the industrial designs, the everyday objects, that we bring into our homes. The structure of the movie, a discussion with designers about the objects they design, mixed with clips of the manufacturing process, and scenes of the object’s place in the home, conveys a tension between the relationship of form, content and function that reveals the nature of contemporary design and designers today.

The film begins by stating that initially objects speak to the one who put them there, the designer that created that object. Then, however, the movie cuts to a scene of someone’s daily morning routine of getting ready and then goes on to say that every object tells a story about the person who owns it; so it’s not really about the designer but, the people and their interaction with that object. This interaction reveals that the content of an object varies according to every person. A designer in the movie gives the example of a Japanese toothpick. Some just use it and throw it away, but others will snap off the end to indicate that it’s used and someone else will use that broken piece as a rest for the toothpick. Content in form is sometimes added or subtracted by the user and this choice is different for each person. We see and experience this disconnect with many objects in our life such as when we don’t use certain features on our cell phones, by choosing not to use a feature it no longer exists and in this sense a part of the content of our phone doesn’t exist to us.

The underlying reason that we are faced with this disconnect, as explained in the film, is because in modern design form does not follow function. Unlike “traditional design” where one could quite easily discern the function of an object by looking at it, the example given in the movie of a spoon, now with the advent of the microchip technology-- function can’t necessarily be distinguished just by looking at form. Just like structure or “form” of the movie itself, mostly interviews with designers, doesn’t quite follow the purpose or “function” of the movie which is an in depth look that the everyday objects that surround us. So, a movie about objects mostly has interviews with people, function can’t be distinguished by form. Some examples of this phenomenon presented in the movie are the iPhone and the Roomba.

Gary Hustwit through his film Objectified defines design as we know it today. He states that contemporary design is not even seen as design at all, it’s seen as something that always existed and something that couldn’t be anything other than its current form. So he claims in some sense that contemporary design has captured, through the design of certain objects, the utopia; it has managed to capture the elusive through form. However, since form and content doesn’t quite follow function in many of these design’s there is always a tension, a disconnect, so that an object isn’t fully able to attain that utopia. But, as depicts in the movie, this phenomenon is to be seen as a positive booster that gives modern design, as Professor Housefield would say, its foible. These faults and quirkiness of contemporary design able it to succeed and have such a great impact on people and their daily lives.

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

Links:

http://www.objectifiedfilm.com/objectified-trailer/

http://www.objectifiedfilm.com/