Touched by a Star

Let’s conduct a simple test. Raise your hand if live in a house designed by a famous architect like Rem Koolhaas or Frank Gehry? How many of you wear a piece of clothing designed by Miuccia Prada or John Galliano? Hands up, please. I would suspect that there are a few raised hands out there but not an overwhelming majority.

Anyone listen to an iPod or drive a Mazda? I would venture that there are a lot more of you now reaching for the ceiling. If you did, congratulations, you are the proud owner of an MP3 player designed by perhaps one of the most talented industrial design studios on the planet or the driver of an automobile conceived by one of the leading automotive design teams in the industry.

While more people recognize architecture or fashion design as professions, few people own things created by the superstars of these vocations. I guess that makes industrial design one of the most democratic design disciplines. What other industry gives the general public so much access to products by its top practitioners? Visionary companies utilize industrial designers for their product development. Industrial designers have designed almost everything you use in your daily lives including even the most inexpensive items.

Take a company like Method Home. Their packaging is exquisite not to mention the great scents and cleaning products they manufacture. In 1983, the great Italian designer, Giorgetto Giugiaro, even designed a pasta for Voiello called Marille. So for around a dollar one could purchase a designer object by a hall of famer. How democratic is that?

In today’s celebrity obsessed world, I believe that a lot more people would really get into design if they knew that some of the everyday products out there were designed by the stars of this industry.

Gaga for Design

Today’s posting is a critique, a design review if you will. So for the first critique on Design Confidential I’ve chosen not a car, a furniture collection, a building, an envoronment or even an electronic gadget or work of graphic design. I’m going for the Gaga. Lady Gaga that is. I believe that her video for “Bad Romance” is a good piece of design.

By now you’re probably thinking I’ve sniffed too many Pantone markers. So let’s get critiquing.

The video begins with the title “Bath Haus of Gaga”. This could have easily read Bauhaus of Gaga for its strict adherence to the “less is more” philosophy. This modern, minimalist approach is used throughout the piece creating a strong visual consistency. Everything from the interior spaces, the furniture, décor accessories and the props all work together aesthetically and are of the same theme. Call it futuristic or sci-fi but it all hangs together. The great architects such as Alvar Aalto or Frank Lloyd Wright believed in retaining an aesthetic consistency in their projects. They insisted on designing not only the building but the furniture also. So in this regard, the video holds true to having a very exacting attention to detail.

The interiors themselves while they might seem from outer space do exist in high design spaces. Pick up a copy of Artravel or Frame and you will find domestic environments similar to the Gaga video. The bleak white spaces with endless gridded ceilings and floors remind me of the experimental landscapes of Archizoom and Superstudio, a collaborative of avant garde Italian design thinkers of the 1960s.

Design stars also make cameos. Philippe Stark’s Zikmu iPod station gets actuated by Lady Gaga’s steel-mesh covered fingernail. Stark appears again with his Kartell La Marie chairs while she struts in front of a group of playboys. Alexander McQueen’s claw stilettos even make an appearance.

Lastly any song that has a lyric that stating “I want your design” merits a post in this blog.

Check out "Bad Romance".