http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/archives/2005/03/new_school.html#more
March 11, 2005
New School
Call me old school,..but every now and then I get this feeling that I need some one to poke me in the eye….please……
Usually if I have to read another article by a journalist who in a fit of cathartic euphoria, discovers that great design can be had by regular folks…...ok now wait for it,………..without having to pay a lot of money!
Like some modern day version of Prometheus*, designers are forced over and over again to nod politely, suffer the witty observations and acknowledge anew the eventual epiphany that some companies, by using the skills of industrial designers, can create really good pproducts.....
We see this article quite a lot every time design goes new school…
Here's another one,…..someone please poke me in the eye the next time the profession as a whole appears to discover that strategy, research and defining the problem are the new direction for the growth and salvation of design. If Charles Eames was here today and you said to him, or to Ray Eames, or to George Nelson or to Jay Doblin ……"you know the design profession really needs to focus on the strategic front end of design before executing solutions"…..I'm fairly certain the response would be a raised eyebrow and a bemused stare.
Design goes New School, vs Old school thinking:
Which is better?……either can be a compliment or a condemnation….man, that is so old school …. or check out that vintage Land Rover,,,that is so old school,,,,,means exactly the opposite thing.
New school - metallics.
Old school - metal
The process of design doesn't really change at its core but the tools and the methods are definitely updating…faster than predicted. So I started thinking about what it means to think new and old school……
Old school: immense pride in the ability to manufacture, most predominant in the post-World War II era when we were obviously shifting industrial manufacturing resources into product designs. Economy was great, people were driving cars with tail fins that looked like rocket ships, and drinking martinis at lunch was perfectly common. It was really a remarkable period of exuberance and that carried into the 60's as well.
True old school story - A classic about the Raymond Loewy office in New York. In a reflection by the writer Ogden Nash, the story goes that about midday one Friday the man in charge of the drinking water coolers in the Loewy office removed the water bottles, empty or not, and replaced them with gallon containers of martini, which was then available in Loewy's preferred mixture and chilled as necessary on tap all afternoon. Now it goes on to say that there's some question about the story being true because they couldn't figure out whether he was mixing his gin 6 to 1 or 10 to 1……,
New school - Ikea,Sony,Target, okay, they're making great inroads in championing design, and we have a lot more choices. If you don't like what Wal-Mart has, there's a Target on the corner next to it. But if you don't like what they have, you can go to or go on-line and buy from Ikea or the Sony store. Here's the difference, you walk through a Target and you still have to look for what's really well designed. You walk through an Ikea or a Sony store and you have to look for something that isn't …
New school- the I-pod
Old school - the I-Mac
New school - product lust, saved a corporation.
New school - "meeting the design police," a pejorative term for regulating the use of all sorts of dimples and waves .
Old school - modernism
New school - modern
New school - any publicity is good.
Old school - publicity is a double edge sword.
True old school story - By an associate of Raymond Lowey's regarding a visit in 1960 by Mr. Loewy to the ivory towers of International Nickel to discuss a design program with them. …"The potential fee was in the area of a quarter of a million dollars, which in 1960 was a considerable amount of money. Once we were seated Mr. Lacue (President of International Nickel) said, ‘before you begin we would like to show you this,’ and reaching into his desk drawer he took out a shirt cardboard to which was taped a newspaper clipping showing a car that Raymond Loewy had modified. The article had a printed comment that Loewy had eliminated many pounds of vulgar chrome from the design. I was stunned. I have no idea what Loewy said, but I can clearly recall the other voice saying ‘if that's your attitude regarding chrome how can you do a credible service to our company.’ We didn't leave with a contract, we left with our tails between our legs and we just left them hanging there."
New school story - Ring. "Hello Mr. Dziersk? I work for Candice Bergen's office in Hollywood and Joanie Mitchell just cancelled and she wondered if you could come out here tomorrow and talk to her about design." So I thought it was one of Elizabeth's (my wife) friends, you know, and I said sure, when would you like me there? They said, "can you be here at 10:00?" I said okay, how am I going to get there? They said "we'll have first class tickets waiting for you at O'Hare in the United terminal at 6:00, can you be there?" I said, fine, yeah.
Ten o’clock the next morning I'm in Hollywood sitting across from Murphy Brown and she says to me, the very first question out of the gate, "Mark, the Americans have always been known for having incredibly bad taste, the English call us necessary, but not vital, what's all this new interest in beautiful things?"
New school - promoting the profession
Old school - Streamlining or clean lining.
New school - Streamlining or clean lining
New old school - when industries are competing at equal price and functionality, design is the only differential that matters.
New school - incredibly tough competition
Old school - incredibly tough competition
New school - maybe it was the culture, maybe it was the space movement, maybe the war in Vietnam, but for design the 70's and 80's were very, very quiet decades with no real heroes.
New school - At a lecture at a business school in Chicago the other day, I asked these non-design educated people to do something for me before the talk, I said write down the three most famous industrial designers in the world today and they wrote down,..Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Henry Ford.
Old school - In the 50's or 60's if you said "who was the best industrial designer in this country?" People would tick off Loewy or Dreyfus or Teague like we now recognize George Clooney or Madonna
New school - function is out, form is in. This kind of demeaned the profession for quite a lot of people. On the other hand we had twenty pages in Time magazine, which encouraged a lot of people to become interested in design and what's happening now in this new modern movement.
New Old school -the new Golden Age of design.
New Old school - I've been an industrial designer for more than 20 years and my mother still doesn't know what I do. For a living…
Old New school -the orchestrated influence of negative space in a silhouette can make a form aggressive or passive.
New school - the camera, after you use it, you give it back to your photofinisher, they crack it open, they take the film out, develop it and give you the pictures. The camera goes back to the company, most of the internal parts are stamped and reused. All that plastic gets ground up, you add some virgin resin to the regrind and the next camera is molded from the previous one…… so that the camera's life is a closed cycle between the company and the consumer….
Old school - take credit for a design without acknowledging other participation.
New school - They catch you not acknowledging people who have worked on a design that wins an award, they take the award back
New school - Your shirt and slacks will very soon LAN connect
New school - A water glass in a restaurant will inform the wait staff that you need a refill.
Cool,….I guess in the end, I'm going with New School….
I have a lot of faith that "new school thinking" and this current generation of designers will create a new generation of design heroes…. The time is certainly right for a new school of important young designers to emerge in the field…..
Last story. In a class I teach at Northwestern University on the essentials of product design, I use an article from Fortune Magazine written and published in 1937 that introduces the newly minted and labeled profession of Industrial Design to the world. It's called Fish or Fowl? It's an article worth getting your hands on. I came to find out later that none other than a young George Nelson ghost wrote it. The same George Nelson who went on to become the famous Industrial Designer and design writer.
I ask the students to also read two recent magazine cover stories on Design and compare the content and tenor of the two…It is a striking contrast. The earlier article focuses entirely on the idea of design as a profession, such as Law or Medicine, that can change the face of businesses and introduce processes resulting in ROI -- the latter two, both an expose on cool stuff and cool people….. Now while some might think of Mr. Nelson as "old school." Here's what is interesting for me …when I read his article, I don't feel like I need anyone to poke me in the eye…..
*The character in Greek mythology who was chained to a rock and had his liver plucked out by an eagle only to have it grow back and repeat the process the next day and the next…over and over again as penance for angering Zeus