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"Luminous Art & Design :: Art & Artists"
Industrial Design :: Biography and Books"
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Industrial design is design of mass-produced products and is concerned with function, value and appearance of products. Industrial design developed after the Industrial Revolution out of the need for a balance between the industry and the craft.
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Industrial design is design of mass-produced and machine-made products. Aesthetics and usability of the products are the principal considerations in industrial design. Industrial designers are concerned with the function, value and appearance of products but also with the planning and development of the production process. A good designed mass-product has to be beautiful, usable and should also be possible to produce economically efficient.
Industrial design is applied to consumer products as well as industrial products and includes furniture, house ware, appliances, transportation, tools, farm equipment, jewelry, and leisure goods. Industrial designers do not only design new products, but also improve existing products by changing the materials or shapes to improve usability, lower production costs and create more appealing products. Designers are involved in four major design and research activities: human behavior, the human-machine interface, the environment, and the product itself.
The history of industrial design started with the industrialization of Western Europe in the second half of the 18th century. The Industrial Revolution helped the economy expand and large urban centers developed. Before this period, production of everyday objects was the result of individual manual labor, but now handcrafted goods could no longer keep up with the growing demand for better products. The artisans were excluded from industrial manufacturing. However, a new profession developed out of the need for a balance between the industry and the craft; industrial design. The term ‘industrial designer’ was first used in the 1920s in the USA to describe the specialists that worked on product design.
Early developments in industrial design happened in northern Europe with the foundation of design schools that advocated the introduction of art to industry. In 1907, the German national designers’ organization Deutscher Werkbund was formed. The members protested the ugliness of the built environment and argued fundamental questions of the relationship between usefulness and beauty, and the purpose of beauty in a standard object. This philosophical direction became the basis of the Bauhaus, the design school that was founded in 1919 with the intention to be a combined architecture school, crafts school, and academy of the arts. The school’s philosophy stated that artists should be trained to work in the industry. Bauhaus influenced the development of industrial design over the world. In 1925, the Bauhaus moved to Dessau, and a school of industrial design remained in Weimar. This school was eventually known as the Technical University of Architecture and Civil Engineering.
A continuous aspect of industrial design is ‘planned obsolescence’, a term coined by Brook Stevens in 1954. He declared that it was the mission of industrial design to ‘instill in the buyer a desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary’. This means that industrial designers upgrade products as often as possible and introduce newer, faster, and better models to make their predecessors seem less desirable. Also products are designed to lose their peak functionality after a certain period of use to encourage the consumer to purchase again. Lately, this has been described as a marketing ploy, and has been related to environmental issues as pollution and resource depletion causing a controversy.
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