design question

swears

swears

preppy-kei
Just read this in a post by Stelfox in the "Dissensus men" thread:

i do want a good watch — preferably a vintage stainless steel tag from the seventies, the ones that are very simple but quite brutally designed with no ergonomic rounded edges like they have these days
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Which got me thinking about something I've often talked about with mates:

Why does everything designed in the last 10-15 years seem to have that ergonomic, "organic", pod-like look? Cars, electrical appliances, furniture, packaging (the new HD disk boxes are a recent example) loads of things. Was there an actual movement/trend in design to make this happen, or was it just an idea that spread due to its practicality? I remember someone telling me that the Air Max 95 was a big influence on modern design, but it seems to have started before that.

Any design bods know what I'm talking about? A bit of the history behind it?
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
yeah i read a good piece on "bio-design" a few years back in one a them art mags. main point was where the machine age of modernist design was about fitting humans into a geometric ideologically driven formal environment, bio-design (which as far as can tell came onto the scene in the 90s - with the blue and white macs and... those sneakers. yeah you know which ones Im talkin about) is all about fitting the machine to our bodies. and that it is driven by no obvious political ideology other than consumerism itself.
 
nomos

nomos

Administrator
i think it had something to do with a reaction against the angularity of 80s design in general. round became the new look of the future. i remember noticing a sudden shift when the first ford taurus came out. prior to that, most american, european and japanese cars were all straight lines and sharp corners.

the taurus from robocop:

robocop_ford.jpg


http://www.bigscreencarhire.com/robocop_car.htm
 
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swears

swears

preppy-kei
Yeah, cars seem to have gotten rounder and rounder... I remember the Ford Ka being really chic ten years ago, lol. I saw a 70s Merc the other day and it looked like a giant shoebox, really conspicuous in modern surroundings.

and that it is driven by no obvious political ideology other than consumerism itself.
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Yeah, I was thinking maybe the case was that blobs just sold better than squares.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
i remember one of the funny points in that article was for all its talk of "geared toward the end user and designed with nothing but experience in mind", you couldn't put, say, a stack of paper on top of this thing:
g3_400.jpg
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Is there an element of what's technologically easier to do? I can imagine that doing blobby organic design on a mass scale requires reasonably modern computer design software, and maybe in some cases modern manufacturing technology. So flat, angular stuff just looks a bit like it's stuck in the past.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
Slothrop said:
So flat, angular stuff just looks a bit like it's stuck in the past.
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well i think theres already been a backlash against blob design. and going back to flat and angular... kinda like boot-cut vs. drain-pipe i s'pose :confused:
 
T

tate

Brown Sugar
nomos said:
i think it had something to do with a reaction against the angularity of 80s design in general. round became the new look of the future. i remember noticing a sudden shift when the first ford taurus came out.
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I remember that design change with the taurus so well, too! How funny. The first rounded-off Tauri (lolz) must have been around about '87-88, just going from memory of folks who had them where I lived. Sports cars seemed to lead the way in roundness, or streamlined-ness, for putative reasons of aerodynamics. From there the curvy look meant both potentially 'like an expensive sports car' (though many found the taurus very ugly) but also supposedly reflected concerns with fuel-efficiency, coming off of the fuel shortages of the late '70s and so on. More streamlined = less wind drag = better fuel efficiency yada yada, or so they said.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
yeah key words being

tate said:
or so they said.
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could be wrong but i think the difference the shape of the object makes on how much energy it takes to propel it is entirely neglegible at speeds less than like, off the top, 400 MPH.
 
T

tate

Brown Sugar
zhao said:
yeah key words being

could be wrong but i think the difference the shape of the object makes on how much energy it takes to propel it is entirely neglegible at speeds less than like, off the top, 400 MPH.
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Two minutes spent reading about the history of racecar engineering will disabuse you of your error.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
ok! that'll teach me to type without thinking! and here comes the attempted save:

guess i was more thinking about driving in the context of actual urban usage - you drive for 3 minutes and stop at a light, rarely reaching speeds at which aero-dynamics would make a big difference in gas mileage...
 
T

tate

Brown Sugar
zhao said:
ok! that'll teach me to type without thinking! and here comes the attempted save:

guess i was more thinking about driving in the context of actual urban usage - you drive for 3 minutes and stop at a light, rarely reaching speeds at which aero-dynamics would make a big difference in gas mileage...
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Ah yes, well that makes perfect sense in the context you describe, and is probably entirely correct. :D
 
N

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Not to sound too pedantic ;), but it's becomes more important for vehicles to be energy efficient of course. There's also a safety aspect to having softer corners. I think Slothrop's point about it being technologically easier to do curves now makes a lot of sense. You could make a design decision now to go all angular but round is nice, easy on the eye.
 
bruno

bruno

est malade
i think it was driven in part by creative exhaustion (why design when you can make blobs), by a re-discovery of function and form in nature (shells, frogs) and by ergonomy zealots taking over industrial design. all this resulted in bumps and curves in everything from cutlery to running shoes. so god forbid you wanted to make something square, what you had to do was make curves because the human body is curved and this should dictate form. i think the curve thing has served to separate mass market products from ultra high quality things, the latter being mostly angular with one knob in the middle and clunky typography, almost handmade in a way, the former an expression of freedom, youth and pleasure.
 
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bruno

bruno

est malade
Slothrop said:
Is there an element of what's technologically easier to do? I can imagine that doing blobby organic design on a mass scale requires reasonably modern computer design software, and maybe in some cases modern manufacturing technology. So flat, angular stuff just looks a bit like it's stuck in the past.
Click to expand...
this is very true. i would think more in the case of cars and so on as the technology to mould plastic has existed for longer.
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
but this is pretty cool too i guess

53231.jpg

shit is this thread ever bringing out the inner geek
 
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