From the course: Objectified

Target, Rob Walker

From the course: Objectified

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Target, Rob Walker

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(upbeat music) - Target in particular kind of fell right into line with and sort of influenced a lot of pop culture thinking about the importance of design and the kind of virtue of design. The basic idea was good design in something you want. Good design in something that distinguishes you at sort of a marker progress. If you are a person who recognizes good design, it distinguishes you from all of the naive and sort of corny bujwah of the past, the past being everything up to that minute. So you can now buy into that, you can buy into progress, good design, good taste. And they had it available to you in a very attainable way. Often, the way that a product comes into being isn't because a bunch of expert designers sat down and said, "What are the 10 most important problems "that we can solve?" There is a company that's writing a check, and what the company wants is new SKUs. They want more stuff and they want more people to buy it. And that's the name of the game. (upbeat music) We tend to want the new things. They can do something that has a different look, a fresher look, a newer look, a new now, next now kind of look. And the problem with spending a lot of time focusing on what's very now and very next is that it isn't very forever. And that means that it doesn't last because there's someone else coming along trying to design what's now and next after that. And part of their agenda whether it's over-articulated or not is to make whatever used to be now look like then, so that people will buy the new now.

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