Objectified Page #2

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dramatic transformation

between this raw blank and the final part.

But what we end up with,

is a part that's got all of the mounting features, all of

the bosses... this is just one part,

but this one part is providing so much functionality.

And this one part really does enable this product.

So much of the effort behind a product like the

MacBook Air was experimenting

with different processes. There's a... it's completely

non-obvious,

but the way that you hold... to get from this part, to

this part...

there's an incredibly complex series of fixtures to

hold this part in the different machine stages.

And we end up spending a lot of time designing

fixtures.

The design of this, in many ways wasn't the design

of a physical thing,

it was figuring out process.

It's really important in a product to have a sense of

a hierarchy of what's important

and what's not important, by removing those things

that are all vying for your attention.

An indicator has a value when it's indicating

something.

But if it's not indicating something, it shouldn't be

there.

It's one of those funny things, you spend so much

time to make it less conspicuous and less obvious.

And if you think about it so many of the products

that we're surrounded by, they want you to be very

aware of just how clever the solution was.

When the indicator comes on, I wouldn't expect

anybody to point to that as a feature,

but at some level I think you're aware of a calm and

considered solution,

that therefore speaks about how you're going to use

it, not the terrible struggles

that we as designers and engineers had in trying to

solve some of the problems.

That's quite obsessive, isn't it?

We now have a new generation of products where

the form bears absolutely no relation

to the function. I mean, look at something like an

iPhone and think of all the things it does.

In "ye olden days" of what are called analog

products, in other words they're not digital,

they're not electronic, something like a chair or a

spoon. "Form follows function" tended to work.

So if say you imagine being a Martian and you just

land on planet Earth, and you've never seen

a spoon or a chair before. You can guess roughly

what you're supposed to do with them...

sit on them or feed yourself with them... by the

shape of the object, by the way it looks.

Now all that has been annihilated by the microchip.

So design is moving from this culture of

the tangible and the material, to an increasingly

intangible and immaterial culture,

and that poses an enormous number of tensions

and conflicts within design.

I think there are really three phases of modern

design.

One of those phases, or approaches if you like, is

looking at the design in a formal relationship,

the formal logic of the object. The act of form-giving,

form begets form.

The second way to look at it is in terms of the

symbolism, and the content of what you're

dealing with. The little rituals that make up...

making coffee, or using a fork and knife,

or the cultural symbolism of a particular object.

Those come back to inhabit and help give form,

help give guidance to the designer about how that

form should be, or how it should look.

The third phase is looking at design in a contextual

sense, in a much bigger-picture scenario.

It's looking at the technological context for that

object, it's looking at the human-object relationship.

For the first phase you might have something fairly

new, like Karim Rashid's Kone vacuum

for Dirt Devil, that the company sells as so beautiful

that you can put it on display,

in other words you can leave it on your counter and

it doesn't look like it's a piece of crap.

Conversely you can look at James Dyson and his

vacuum cleaners. He approaches the design

of the vacuum in a very functionalist manner, but if

you look at the form of it,

it's really expressing that, it's expressing the

symbolism of function.

There's color introduced into it, and he's not a

frivolous person, so it's really there to articulate

the various components of the vacuum. Or you

could look at, in a more recent manifestation

of this kind of contextual approach, would be

something like the Roomba.

There the relationship to the vacuum is very

different. First of all there's no more human

interaction relationship, the relationship is to the

room it's cleaning.

I think it's even more interesting that the company

actually has kits available in the marketplace

through iCreate, and it's essentially the Roomba

vaccum cleaner kit that's made for hacking.

People are really wacky, they've created things like

Bionic Hamster, which is attaching

the play wheel or dome that the hamster uses as

the driving device for the Roomba,

so it's the ultimate revenge of the animal on the

vacuum cleaner.

How I think about it as a designer myself is that

design is the search for form,

what form should this object take.

And designers have asked that question, and used

different processes.

Hey, what about the forks for the bike?

Can you make a few inquiries?

Because l'd love to do the forks, I think

the forks would be really cool.

Well this is my little table of... one of my tables...

you know l've got a whole workshop downstairs

which is just full of sh*t. But these are just things

that I just find interesting,

and things I want to have around and look at.

Sometimes these are the materials

that l'm looking for an excuse to use, as opposed to

the other way around.

But things like Micarta, this is one of my favorite

materials, and it's actually made of linen,

so it's a bit like wood, actually, it feels like a living

material. And it's enormously heavy.

And these kind of weird meshes, how cool is that. I

have no idea what they use this for...

it's like this stainless steel... braided... stuff.

My career didn't start after art school, it started

when I made my first object

in my grandfather's garage. I remember my uncle

had said as soon as I could tell the time,

he'd give me a wristwatch. So I figured out how to

tell the time, and he gave me this wristwatch,

and I promptly pulled it to bits. I went out to my

grandfather's garage and found an old bit of

Plexiglas and started hacking away at this bit of

Plexiglas and drilling holes,

and I transplanted this movement from this

once-working watch into it.

That was my first....

...design, I guess.

I grew up in a generation... you know I can

remember when they landed on the moon.

I can't deny that that was a massive event in my

life. All of my dreams were about the future.

What I want to do is to be able to have things that

don't exist..... things you can't go out and buy,

or things that irritate you. Anger, or dissatisfaction

at the very least,

plays such an important role in motivating you,

to do what we do.

But ultimately my job as a designer is to look into

the future,

it's not to use any frame of reference that exists

now. My job is about what's going to happen,

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