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not what has happened.

As a designer, my philosophy is fundamentally

non-disposable,

and somehow trying to offer products that you want

to keep,

and products that you feel most importantly will

stand the test of time.

That hopefully won't date as badly as other things.

Because it's all about wanting to have new things,

isn't it? Ultimately, we could all still be

using the mobile phone we had three years ago.

But you know we've all had about five

in the meantime.

Of course I fundamentally believe that something

that's well-designed should not necessarily

cost more. Arguably it should cost less. But the

problem is that design has become a way

for a lot of companies to "add value" because

something is designed, and therefore

charge more money for it.

And it will become more and more pervasive, and

things will be

marketed in terms of design, in the future.

The idea of elitism and the idea of design are

merged. And it's out of this kind of culture

that the idea of democratization of design comes

from. I always tell people that I grew up

with good design in my home,

with all the Joe Columbo

and Achille Castiglioni pieces,

not because we were rich, or

my parents were educated in design. Not at all, we

were totally middle class and my parents

are doctors. It's just because that's what you would

find at the corner.

There's design that costs more, and design that

costs less. Some of it is good, some of it is bad.

"Democratization of design" is an empty slogan,

it should really not even exist.

Target, in particular, fell right into line with, and

influenced a lot of pop culture thinking

about the importance of design and the virtue of

design. The basic idea was good design is

something you want, good design

is something that distinguishes you,

it's sort of a mark of progress,

if you are a person who recognizes good design it

distinguishes you from all the naive and

corny bourgeois 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 ten most

important problems we can solve?"

There's a company that's writing a check. And what

the company wants is new SKU's,

they want more stuff, and they want more people to

buy it. And that's the name of the game.

We tend to want 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 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,

Iook like then, so that people will buy the new now.

Cars are the biggest and most abundant set of

sculptures that we have

in contact every day in our lives.

Although they're reproduced by machines, and

computer milled stamps that make them,

actually every one of them was originally carved by

hand, by men and women using techniques

not a whole lot different than Michelangelo.

Car designers are making

extremely dynamic, sexy

objects, in theory. But in reality,

they're bending metal, plastic,

glass. This isn't like a woman coming down a

catwalk, where she's swishing the dress and

showing a little bit here and there, and getting your

eyes to goggle. Unh-uh. This thing is frozen in time.

Which means we have to create it in a way so that

you as the observer look at it,

and you put the motion into it, by the way you scan

it. Because that car has to be a reflection

of that emotional energy that you want to see in it.

I believe very strongly in the emotional authenticity

of the product, it should reflect what it is.

So if the car is a performance object it should have

that feel.

It is quite bothersome to me when I see humanistic

elements of a car being strangely handled.

For instance, cars have a face.

Well, you can have lots of faces. But when you put

that one face on a car, it's there forever,

it's just one expression. And because cars have

evolved to having two elements,

big taillights and a license plate, the backs of cars

have also evolved a face,

also very interesting, and some of those are

awfully... challenging.

How do we solve problems of lightness, how do we

solve problems of efficiency? I think these

are things that are going to be difficult, but we can

solve those. But the real challenges of car design

are going to be addressing the future generations'

perceptions of what they want cars to be in their

Iives? Do they want them to fade into the

background, and just be there when they need

one?

Or do they want them to stand up and be a

representative of them, basically like we grew up

with it, they're kind of like avatars. I show myself to

the outside world through this car.

When you own the car and you drive the car, even

your decisions about are you going to put

a bumper sticker on it... there's an idea of an

audience.

I feel pretty strongly, and this is true not just for cars

but for almost everything we buy, that our real

audience is really ourselves. And that the person

that you're really speaking to

when you're speaking about why me in this car,

why is this the right car for me...

you're making a statement to yourself about

yourself.

In sort of an abstract way, you're thinking about

what they might be thinking of you,

and whether or not they like your Obama sticker, or

your Save the Whales, or...

or your Christian fish, or whatever it might be.

But the crucial thing is the self,

it's your own audience, your own story of l'm not

that guy, or I am that guy, or that woman.

Because the truth is no one cares, on the highway.

Design is about mass production.

Design is using industry to produce serialized

goods.

And I try everything I can in the mass market to

change the goods, that people who know

nothing about design, or the people who say they

don't care about design, or the people who

don't believe their world should have contemporary

goods in it.

Those are the people I think design can have such

an amazing affect on their lives.

When I was a teenager, I had this white -- from

Claritone, I think it was a Canadian company,

it was a white bubble stereo, with two bubbled white

speakers.

And it was probably very inexpensive, it was a real

democratic product. It was a turntable,

and the whole thing built in. And it was a beautiful

thing... Looking back,

and thinking why it was a beautiful thing, was

because it was very self-contained,

and the message was very strong and very simple,

and at the same time it was very human.

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