A New Year's Wish

I’d like Design Confidential to head into the New Year without a resolution but with a wish. My hope for 2010 comes from an event in 2009. It occurred in April during the Green Living Show in Toronto and it left me disillusioned. I had begun to think that Canada’s manufacturing sector was starting to learn but I was wrong.

I had thought that the new “green” industries would be run by a new generation of progressive, forward thinking individuals that would recognize that implementing a design program will help their business prosper and clean the earth at the same time. Was I ever off the mark! While I certainly do not want to paint everyone with the same brush, I must say that most of the people I spoke with on that occasion did not have any interest whatsoever in improving their products through design.

The low point came when talking to a very young Toronto area company that produced green home cleaning products. They manufactured their own liquids and did their own packaging. I saw this as a good fit as I have done some very innovative package design for major international companies. However, their response to me was so negative and ignorant that it bordered on rudeness. They described design as an “unnecessary expense”. Even when I tried to explain that their competitors like Clorox invested large sums of money on design to give their products the most effective and functional packaging, they almost had me hustled off.

These are the same enterprises that complain that they can’t compete in the globalized economy, the same manufacturers that lobby governments to tax imports, the same companies you read about in the news that close because they can’t sell their wares anymore. These same individuals that have not learned from the economic downturn that well-designed, desirable products (especially lower commitment products like cleaning supplies) are more recession-proof than bad products.

So my wish for this New Year is that Canadian companies will see design for what it truly is, not an unnecessary expense but a necessary investment.

Design of the Decade

The 00s are coming to a close and as most media compile lists of the decade, Design Confidential should weigh in on the product that defined the era. My choice is a fairly obvious one but perhaps my rationale behind it has its own unique take.

I have selected the Apple iPod Touch/iPhone as my Design of the Decade. One could argue that the original iPod should be the winner. However, I believe the iPod was more an incarnation of the Sony Walkman, a device to take your music/videos with you. What was unique about the “touch-based” devices was not the portability but the interface.

We morphed from button pushers to screen touchers and device movers. This organic contact brought a more humanistic approach to how we connect ourselves to these machines. It opened up vast possibilities of fun and function. This piece of glass could transform itself from a tool to a musical instrument in seconds. Scrolling through your vacation photographs was now more like leafing through a paper album than mousing and clicking through computer files. You could even drive a racecar by steering your iPhone.

As for physical design, the iTouch/iPhone used very traditional materials, stainless steel and glass, but with new green twists. The glass is arsenic free and the metal is recyclable. It presented a strong iconic image, one that was copied by other manufacturers.

The product is the torch bearer of the new music media. It is the ultimate port of call of the MP3 cruise. The touch-based interface made the already easy to use iTunes music/video management system even more user-friendly.

However, for me, these products were Design of the Decade because they proved once again that people love good design. Check out anyone listening to music or gaming in public and you’ll notice the distinctive white ear bugs. Look at their hands and that steel enclosure will glint in the light. In a decade when mainstream design continued to go backward in many ways, the Apple iPod Touch and iPhone were shining beacons of modernity, a true reflection of the age we live in.