Objectified Design And Contemporary Design

The film, “Objectified” by Gary Hustwit has pointed out many difficulties that the contemporary designers face today, such as design purposes, mass-produced designs and sustainable designs. Hustwit presented the problems to us by focusing the film on the complex relationships between man and manufactured objects (mainly daily used objects). I believe that is the reason why the film is named “Objectified.” Objectification is when designers attempt to use their products to convey their purposes to the world, and thus, the reason why we need design. It is also the thesis of the film, conveying the importance of design – objectified. In an interviewed in the film, Jonathan Ive, the senior designer in Apple, said that many products today have a form that it has are not surprising or random, but because it follows the cause of nature. Ive explains with the example of playing with an ipod. The shape of an ipod is not surprising or awkward because it is natural for a person to hold it with one hand, and designing a face with multiple buttons that can be pressed with the same holding hand. As such, a good contemporary design would make people recognize its function within the first few seconds of looking at it because it is well objectified in a semiotic way.

Later in the film, by showing how new contemporary design objects are developed on the market, Hustwit pinpointed the problem within each of the steps while the objects were being designed, manufactured, packaged, shipped and disposed. Hustwit depicted that these are the new problems that contemporary designers face today, which designers in the post-industrial age were not confronted. In other words, “design is about mass production” as said by a designer in New York. Because mass production has satisfied people with their desire for the new products, old products are being replaced and sent to waste. And products in the past decades were designed for profits. Rob Walker, the author in New York Time Magazine, says that new products were designed to have new looks but were not meant to last. Designers were to make products that are “used to be new, look like then, and people would buy the new now.”

These are the major problems that Hustwit argues that contemporary designs and designers have to solve. And in order to solve them, Hustwit presented many sustainable designs and solutions around the world. Contemporary designers today not only have to design the product itself but also have provide better shipment methods and recycle solutions for products after disposed.