Industrial Design

B

Packaging

The fundamental problem of design in packaging is to provide all the essential information, such as the instructions for use of the product and the legally required identification of its contents, while fulfilling the broader purpose of selling the product. Because of the current trend toward self-service in merchandising, the importance of packaging increases constantly.

C

Transportation

Industrial design has made valuable contributions in the field of transportation. Only the largest industrial-design offices are equipped to design the interior of ocean liners, aircraft, trains, buses, and other public vehicles. The exterior and dynamic characteristics of these highly complex mechanisms impose strict interior design limitations. In jet airliners, for example, interior space must be maximally utilized to increase the payload without sacrificing the comfort of the passengers. In ocean liners space and weight factors are not so crucial. To compete with other forms of transportation, present-day ocean liners are designed to offer service and luxury features not feasible in aircraft, trains, or buses.

IV

Methods

Every design problem requires special procedures, timing, and techniques, but there is a general routine applicable to all. After the industrial designer is informed of the needs of the client—including data on the intended market for the product, budget allocation, and company policy and equipment—specialists associated with the designer conduct a study of competitive products and an extensive field survey of the manufacturer's plant. A design program is planned, and preliminary designs of the proposed product are then sketched on the basis of the available plant facilities. Rough sketches are chosen for further refinement and study, and the client is then presented with design studies, often in the form of a small model or of a mock-up. Following the selection of the approved design, working drawings indicating the choice of materials and the specifications for finishing and assembly are prepared. A handmade working model is then manufactured and submitted to the client for approval. In the case of an automobile, for example, one or several are handmade and tested at proving grounds before final machine dies are ordered and production begins.

The industrial designer is essentially the creator of a pattern to guide the operations of skilled persons or machines. The development of industrial design led to the creation of new procedures, such as the method of encasing a product to be redesigned in soft modeling clay, in order that the modifications in the design may be molded directly from the old products. Another industrial-design method is based on the fact that small models do not reflect accurately the design characteristics of the full-scale product. Distortion often occurs in magnification as a result of highlights and shadows that change basic spatial relationships. To view the design in full scale, the profession employs a photographic system in which a small drawing is projected to full scale on a section of a wall. Revisions of the design are then made directly on the wall projection by the industrial designers.

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V

History

Before the Industrial Revolution, goods were handmade by artisans, who were usually involved in the whole process of creation, took pride in their work, and often sold their wares directly to the customer. The development in the 18th century of the factory system, with mass production and specialization of labor and the appearance of middlemen, changed the situation. Factory workers tending machines had little involvement with a product and felt no responsibility to the buyer. Factory owners were often chiefly concerned with profits. As a result, although many products, such as cast-iron stoves and building units, were functional, many more were ugly and badly made. Applications of machine-made ornament in hopes of disguising low quality and pleasing a mass market were usually an aesthetic failure. A few late 19th-century reformers, such as the English designer William Morris and members of the Arts and Crafts movement, protested and advocated a return to the standards of medieval handicrafts. They influenced art nouveau style and the Vienna Secession (see Sezessionstil) movement, but these attempts at improved design had little effect on mass production at the time.

A

The Bauhaus

The concept of industrial design did not really take hold until 1919, when the German architect Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus, an artistically revolutionary school of design in Weimar, Germany. The Bauhaus became a center for artists trying to combine aesthetic concerns with new industrial materials and techniques, in what became known as the International style. They generally advocated simplicity of form that was adapted to the object's function.