TECHNOLOGY, BUSINESS AND THE MARKET

LECTURE 4: INDUSTRIAL DESIGN AND INNOVATION

LECTURE OBJECTIVES

To examine the developing role of the industrial designer and to explore the links to
product innovation.

1. Introduction

Modern industrial design has its roots in the 19th century and specifically the
rationalisation and standardisation of products that came initially with the American
system of manufacturing and, later, mass production. The catalyst for the
widespread awareness of developments in the USA was the so called Great
Exhibition of 1851 held in Hyde Park. As Heskett has commented:-

‘By the middle of the nineteenth century…, largely as a result of the Great
Exhibition of 1851, the rest of the world became aware of new methods of
manufacture in the United States that established the fundamental patterns and
processes of industrial mass production. These were characterised by large-scale
manufacture of standardised products, with interchangeable parts, using power
machine-tools in a sequence of simplified mechanical operations. The implications
of this approach…were not confined to production methods, but also affected the
whole organization and co-ordination of production, the nature of the work process,
the methods by which goods were marketed, and, not least, the type and form of
goods produced.’ (Heskett, 1980, p.50)

In the early stages of the American system of manufacturing, the standards of

accuracy were poor and components required substantial amounts of ‘fitting’ – filing
and machining before assembly could take place. However, improvements in
machine tools, the evolution of fixed standards of ‘tolerances’ and the introduction of
accurate gauges and measuring instruments brought gradual improvement. By the
time Henry Ford was putting the Model T Ford into mass production in the early
years of the 20th century, the quality of components had become sufficiently reliable
to feed the moving assembly track in the quantities essential to produce a ‘volume’
car.

In his book Objects of Desire: Design and Society Since 1750, Adrian Forty provides
two common uses of the word ‘design’ as follows:-

‘In one sense it refers to the look of things: saying ‘I like the design’ usually
involves notions of beauty, and such judgements are generally made on that
basis…The second, more exact use of the word,…refers to the preparation of
instructions for the production of manufactured goods, and this is the sense meant
when, for example, someone says, ‘I am working on the design of a car.’ It might be
tempting to separate the two meanings and deal with them independently, but this

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would be a great mistake, for the special quality of the word ‘design’ is that it
conveys both senses, and their conjunction in a single word rightly expresses the
fact that they are inseparable: the way things look is, in the broadest sense, a result
of the conditions of their making.’ (Forty, 1995, pp. 6-7)

In the case of Henry Ford he was interested in design in the second sense offered by
Forty but, certainly in the early days, saw issues of ‘image’ or ‘look’ as secondary.
The technical aspects were paramount and always prevailed over ‘styling’.
Nevertheless, even the rather ‘functional’ looking Model T played its part in defining
what a car ‘should’ look like. This leads on to a further point made by Forty, the
ways in which new innovations are made acceptable/desirable to potential
consumers through the mediation of design. As he puts it, ‘any successful product
must…overcome resistance to novelty….Among the ways in which acceptance…is
won, design, through its capacity to make things seem other than they are, has been
most important. Design alters the ways people see commodities’ (Forty, 1995, p.
11). Increasingly, the technological realities of the product are ‘disguised’ by external
styling. Forty illustrates his point using the example of the design of early radio
cabinets which developed during the 1920s and 30s from crude assemblies of
resistors, wires and valves via imitations of antique furniture to ‘modern’ forms
(initially of plywood but later moulded from ‘bakelite’) suggesting a product belonging
to the future.

2. The industrial design profession in the USA

In the period between the two world wars (1918-1939) the USA emerged as the
leading industrial nation, pioneering the development of consumer goods. The rapid
expansion of electricity supply, alongside a boom in house building, ‘generated’ a
massive increase in the demand for domestic appliances. As the market became
saturated, producers reacted by constantly changing aspects of design in an effort to
maintain sales volumes. In motor manufacturing, General Motors introduced the
‘annual body change’ and an increasing range of colours to attract buyers – the
beginning of built-in obsolescence. However, all of this came to a stuttering halt in
the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 - with significant consequences for
the future development of industrial design. As Woodham puts it:-

‘The Wall Street Crash of 1929 had a devastating impact on the American
economy. It also brought about significant changes in the profession of the industrial
designer, which moved away from concerns with the outward styling of products
towards a more developed understanding of materials, manufacturing processes,
marketing strategies, and consumer aspirations….It was in such a milieu that the first
generation of industrial designers emerged.’ (Woodham, 1997, pp. 66-7)

Raymond Loewy, certainly in terms of reputation, was the most prominent individual
among the new generation – appearing on the cover of Time magazine in 1949
surrounded by many of the products he had designed. Loewy was unashamedly

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commercial describing ‘good design’ as ‘an upward sales curve’ and producing
numerous company logos. He was strongly influenced by the fashion for streamlining
during the 1930s, successfully exploiting the link in the minds of consumers between
speed and modernity – even in static products such as refrigerators and pencil
sharpeners!

The success and publicity gained by Loewy and other designers of his era (such as
Brooks Stevens who we will study in Lecture 7 in the context of ‘planned
obsolescence’) prompted manufacturers to give greater recognition to the
competitive advantage offered by good design. Further, a greater understanding of
ergonomics, also known as ‘human engineering’ or ‘human factors’ in the USA
began to influence design standards. The scientific managers such as Taylor, Gantt
and particularly the Gilbreths had been aware of issues relating, for example, to
posture and fatigue as early as the 1900s. By the 1960s ergonomics had become
increasingly scientific and been joined by anthropometrics – the systematic study of
measurement of the human form – when designers were concerned with designs
involving human movement. Prominent in the field was Henry Dreyfuss who
published his influential books Designing for People in 1955 and Measure of Man:
Human Factors in Design in 1959. Ergonomics and anthropometrics were significant
issues in designing for the key emerging industry of the era viz. computing.

During the 20th century the number of white collar jobs grew steadily in number as
organizations became increasingly complex. When the sociologist C. Wright Mills
published his book White Collar: The American Middle Classes in 1951 he observed
that, ‘technology has narrowed the stratum of workers needed for given volumes of
output: it has also altered the types and proportions of skill needed in the production
process. Know-how, once an attribute of the mass of workers, is now in the machine
and the engineering elite who design it.’ (Wright Mills, 1951/1956 p. 67) Wright was
commenting on the transformation of office work as new technologies eroded former
patterns of employment, creating new jobs but rendering others redundant. By the
end of the 20th century, evolutionary change became revolutionary change with the
introduction of computers. This leads us to a consideration of the role of design at a
company that was for many years central to many of these changes – International
Business Machines (IBM).

3. Case study: design at IBM

‘The first modern electronic computer used in business was the Univac, introduced
by Remington Rand in 1950. But another company, IBM, quickly emerged as the
dominant player. Under IBM’s leadership, information technology became the most
dynamic industry of the late 20th century, and perhaps the most important as well.’
(McCraw, 2000, p. 194)

IBM established a design department in 1943 and appointed the Harvard trained
architect Eliot Noyes to head it up. Noyes was influenced by leading European

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modernist architects such as Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, spending a year
working for the latter’s firm and later spending several years as director of industrial
design at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. Noyes developed a
close working relationship with the head of IBM, Tom J. Watson Jnr. When, in 1956,
Watson became convinced that IBM required a corporate design programme, he
turned to Noyes. As Heskett has commented:-

‘He was appointed Consultant Director of Design with very wide powers. The
pattern he established was a company design department for continuity and basic
standards, with outside consultants for fresh ideas, under his own overall
direction…IBM set out to create an elite image, and the conformity to company
standards expected of employees, also extended to design….A set of IBM standards
was published, establishing design specifications for all products.’ (Heskett, 1980, p.
140)

At IBM design became closely linked with technical innovation. In 1961 the company
introduced the ‘Selectric’ typewriter which typed by the novel means of a so-called
‘golf-ball’ - a moulded sphere carrying the various characters that moved across the
paper, shifting and turning to present the appropriate aspect. Noyce designed a
similarly radical casing which emphasised the elimination of the type-bars and
movable carriage. As IBM developed its computer systems during the 1960s, Noyes
produced designs to match. In 1964, after conducting what McCraw has described
as ‘the most expensive privately financed R&D effort in American business history’,
the company the company introduced the ‘System 360’. Small, compact and very
versatile it consisted of a series of rectangular, modular units. Some of the working-
parts were left visible and the console was designed in co-operation with the
company’s ergonomics section to be comprehensible and easily operated. The
‘System 360’ was a ‘spectacular triumph in the marketplace making IBM so strong
that for three decades the company’s name was almost synonymous with
information technology around the globe’ (McCraw, 2000, p.194). Appropriately,
Noyes designs made use of the new plastics, contributing to the ‘System 360’s
image of efficiency and cool modernity and enhancing IBM’s reputation for high
quality design as well as technical sophistication. As will be seen in Lecture 5 IBM’s
pre-eminence did not last as various newcomers – such as Microsoft and Apple
emerged as potent competitors.

4. What constitutes ‘good Industrial design’ – the example of Braun

‘The German firm of Braun, producers of electrical consumer goods, although

much smaller than IBM, have also used design as the foundation of a corporate
identity programme. In 1951 when after their father’s death, Artur and Edward Braun
took over the firm, its products were technically sound but undistinguished. The
brothers were interested in modern design and decided on a new approach. With
Fritz Eichler as head of design, Braun began to pursue a policy of uncompromising

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modernity for products aimed at the upper reaches of the market’. (Heskett, 1980, p.
142)

In 1955 Eichler was joined by Dieter Rams and the characteristic ‘Braun look’ began
to emerge, initially embodied in the ‘Kitchen Machine KM 321’ of 1957 and
subsequently applied to a wide range of domestic products including radios, record
players, clocks and electric razors. Heskett has commented Braun adopted ‘a
reductionist approach, eliminating every unnecessary detail, concentrating on
ordering essential elements.’ Many of Dieter Rams designs became ‘collectibles’ –
MOMA for example began to collect Braun products as early as 1958. Rams
reputation extended far beyond the narrow confines of, often anonymous, corporate
design and his influence has been substantial as will be seen in Lecture 5. Here are
his much quoted ‘ten principles’, note the contrast with what Ram’s saw as the
‘excess’ displayed by some American designers:-

Dieter Rams Ten Principles of ‘Good Design’

‘Good Design Is Innovative - the possibilities for innovation are not, by any means,
exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for
innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative
technology, and can never be an end in itself.

Good Design Makes a Product Useful - a product is bought to be used. It has to

satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but also psychological and aesthetic. Good
design emphasizes the usefulness of a product while disregarding anything that
could possibly detract from it.

Good Design Is Aesthetic - the aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its

usefulness because products are used every day and have an effect on people and
their well-being. Only well-executed objects can be beautiful.

Good Design Makes A Product Understandable - it clarifies the product’s structure.

Better still, it can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the
user’s intuition. At best, it is self-explanatory.

Good Design Is Unobtrusive - products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are
neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both
neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.

Good Design Is Honest - it does not make a product more innovative, powerful or
valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with
promises that cannot be kept.

Good Design Is Long-lasting - it avoids being fashionable and therefore never

appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s
throwaway society.

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Good Design Is Thorough Down to the Last Detail - nothing must be arbitrary or left
to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the
consumer.

Good Design Is Environmentally Friendly - design makes an important contribution to

the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimises physical
and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.

Good Design Is as Little Design as Possible - less, but better – because it

concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-
essentials. Back to purity - back to simplicity.’

Rams could/should have added that design should always be executed with
manufacture and unit cost in mind.

5. The rise of ‘Retro’

L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel The Go Between starts with the famous line, ‘the past is a
foreign country; they do things differently there’. In his 2011 book Retromania,
Simon Reynolds paraphrases this statement in offering a justification for the rise of
‘retro’, claiming that ‘economic transformations, technological innovations and
sociological shifts’ generate increasing nostalgia for the past, however recent, until it
is the present rather than the past that becomes ‘a foreign country’. ‘Retro’ differs
from ‘heritage’ in that it relates to the recent past and often to ephemera in music,
fashion and style generally – tending to value mass culture rather than ‘folk’ or ‘high’
culture. Reynolds defines retro as follows:-

‘(1) Retro is always about the relatively immediate past, about stuff that happened
in living memory.

(2) Retro involves an element of exact recall: the ready availability of archived
documentation (photographic, video, music, recordings, the Internet) allows for
precision replication of the old style, whether a period genre of music, graphics or
fashion. As a result, the scope for imaginative misrecognition of the past – the
distortions and mutations that characterised earlier cults of antiquity like the Gothic
Revival, for instance, is reduced.

(3) Retro generally involves artefacts of popular culture. This differentiates it from
earlier revivals…which were based around high culture and originated from the
higher echelons of society – aristocratic aesthetes and antiquarians with a rarified
taste for exquisite collectables. Retro’s stomping ground isn’t the auction house or
antique dealer but the flea market, charity shop, jumble sale and junk shop.

(4) A final characteristic of the retro sensibility is that it tends neither to idealise or
sentimentalise the past but seeks to be amused and charmed by it. By and large the
approach is not scholarly and purist but ironic and eclectic…It uses the past as an
archive from which to extract subcultural capital.’ (Reynolds, 2011, pp. xxx to xxxi)

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Whatever the underlying causes of retro might be there is no doubting its influence
which has been significant in terms of design and marketing ranging from music to
motor cycles.

6. Case study: Harley-Davidson motor cycles

Harley-Davidson is arguably the world’s best-known motorcycle brand – certainly in

the sphere of retro. The company was officially established in 1907 by William S.
Harley (1880-1943) and Arthur Davidson (1881-1950) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and,
by 1910, was producing 3,000 bikes each year. During the first world war the
company was contracted to supply 20,000 bikes for the US Army and, by the 1920s,
had become the USA’s largest motorcycle manufacturer with a nationwide network
of dealerships and a growing export market (Dunne 2012). Famous for their size,
design and distinctive exhaust note, Harley-Davidson bikes have featured in
numerous films, particularly road movies, and the strength of the brand is evident in
associated clothing and fragrances. In spite of all this, however, the company almost
melted down during the 1970s as a combination of recession, Japanese competition
and poor quality took it to the brink of bankruptcy.

In 1981 a group of executives, including design-chief William G. Davidson the

grandson of the joint-founder of the company who had worked as a designer for
Brooks Stevens (see Lecture 7), gained control of the company from American Metal
Foundries its corporate parent. Crucially they persuaded the US government to
impose temporary protectionist tariffs on Japanese imported motorcycles. This gave
the company a breathing space while they totally transformed their methods of
production, adopting the just-in-time and total quality management techniques
deployed by their Japanese competitors and removing the traditional distinctions
between blue and white collar workers. The new owners also decided to robustly
promote Harley-Davidson as an American product which was proud of its heritage.
As quality and reliability improved Harley succeeded in moving their products up
market, producing fewer bikes but selling them at a higher price. In 1984 the
company introduced the ‘Evolution’ big twin engine, which powered a new
generation of bikes including the ‘Super Glide’ touring machine. By the late 1980s a
high-end motorcycle had become a status symbol for the yuppie generation – a
generation which had been captivated by Robert M. Persig’s 1974 novel Zen and the
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. Whereas the company had
traditionally drawn its customers from the young working class, by 1990 the typical
buyer was a 35 year old male in a professional occupation earning far above the
national average and in the majority of cases holding a degree (Gross 1996). As its
financial position improved, the company released a range of models which
celebrated Harley’s heritage, blending retro styling developed by ‘Willie G’ Davidson
with leading-edge technology such as the liquid-cooled, fuel-injected, V-twin
‘Revolution’ engine introduced in 2001. A combination of sound management and
technical innovation has so far preserved an iconic brand. Having said this,
however, Harley-Davidson are currently facing competition from other manufacturers
such as Indian and are challenged in export markets as a result of the high value of
the dollar. In an attempt to widen their market they are testing a controversial new
electric model, the ‘Live Wire’, calculated to appeal to a new generation of ‘bikers.

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Sample examination question

Critically examine, using examples from the course, the significance of industrial
design.

Assess the impact of ‘retro’ on industrial design.

References and background literature

Dunne, J. The Motor Bike: The Definitive Visual History, Dorling Kindersley, 2012

Forty, A. Objects of Desire: Design and Society Since 1750, Thames and Hudson,
1995

Heskett, J. Industrial Design, Thames and Hudson, 1980

McCraw, T. American Business, 1920-2000: How it Worked, Harlan Davidson, 2000

Meikle, J. Design in the USA, Oxford University Press, 2005

Reynolds, S. Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past, Faber and Faber,
2011

Woodham, J. Twentieth Century Design, Oxford University Press, 1997