From the course: Objectified

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Rob Walker

Rob Walker

- Before there was kind of a popular notion of good design, as it's defined today, you can read things about, sort of, design as a, there's a book called "The Tastemakers" from like the 50s, and the author refers to industrial designers as Taste Appeal Artists, and, designers today, and that's such an insulting, sort of like, and he's being insulting, I mean that's his goal is to sort of just dismiss these people, like, all you're doing is adding the fins to the Cadillac or whatever, the planned obsolescence to just, to sort of pure form elements that will sell this year's model, that will be a novelty, that will get attention, have shelf appeal, pop, as they say. And that's all you're doing. Now, designers today resist that, they don't want that, and that's why they'll always sort of correct you and say, "What I do isn't about style, "it's about function, style is just one element of it." It is just one element of it, but it is, to this day, remains a crucial element. There aren't…

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