Design & Desire in the Twentieth Century

Thank you to Mid-Centuria for bringing to our attention the work of Danish designer and architect Arne Vodder (1926-2009). Vodder studied with furniture designer Finn Juhl; the two were good friends and later became business partners. Vodder designed furniture for a number of Danish companies but is best known for the work he did for Sibast Furniture in the 1950-1960’s.  The teak and rosewood sideboards he designed during this period are iconic pieces of mid-century modern furniture.¹

Visit Mid-centuria to view more of Vodder’s work.

Arne Vodder, Credenza (circa late 1950s).
Source: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2Ev7Zn9UqvU/T05I2Kw_MjI/AAAAAAAAE_M/-x7go1w3jIE/s640/Arne-vodder-credenza-sideboard-tambour-BR.jpg

Reference

1. Deconet, (2011). Arne Vodder. http://www.deconet.com/decopedia/designer/1239/Arne_Vodder#

René Lalique, Tete De Paon (1932). Photo Credit: Courtesy of RM Auctions.
Source: http://cdn2.retronaut.co/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/11.-Tete-De-Paon-Photo-Credit-Courtesy-of-RM-Auctions.jpg

It’s really quite astounding to think that the amazing work shown above by René Lalique was actually intended as ornamentation for an automobile! Lalique created a variety of glass automobile mascots of both animal and human subjects. These figures included birds, horses, and even a frog. His human forms were generally inspired by ancient mythology. Photographs of more fine examples of the mascots can be viewed in Retronaut.com.

In March of this year, RM Auctions offered a collection of 30 Lalique automobile mascots for auction. The presale estimate was $800,000 to $1.2 million.

Visit Finesse Fine Art for more information on Rene Lalique and his automobile mascots.

Thank you to Aqua Velvet for sharing these great illustrations from the 1944 Industrial Design Show. The images are from the LIFE magazine image archives. If you’re turned on by these illustrations see more on AquaVelvet.

John Tjaarda & Associates — A.M. Fitzpatrick, Automobile Design, (circa 1944).
Source: http://aqua-velvet.com/blog/images/2012/02_feb/06_ID5.jpg

George W. Walker, Product Styling, (circa 1944).
Source: http://aqua-velvet.com/blog/images/2012/02_feb/06_ID2.jpg

“California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way” is on exhibit now through June 3, 2012 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This exhibit features more than 300 items including furniture, ceramics, metalwork, fashion and textiles, as well as industrial and graphic design. It is the first major show to examine the influence of California designers on mid-Twentieth century product design.

Christopher Hawthorne in his review of  “California Design” writes:

“California modernism was a distinct style from its earliest years. It traded the social conscience of the Bauhaus for an approach to design that was not only ‘looser, warmer’ and often ‘ad hoc,’ as Kaplan puts it in the catalog, and more expressive of local character, but also entirely comfortable with the notion of salesmanship and the realities of commerce. Indeed, of the exhibition’s four thematic sections, the one on ‘Selling California Modern’ arguably makes up the heart of the show. The other sections are ‘Shaping,’ on the early years of California modernism; ‘Making,’ on materials and fabrication; and ‘Living,’ on housing, furnishings and the indoor-outdoor postwar aesthetic made possible by a benign climate.” Read the entire review.

More information on “California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way” on the LACMA site.

Read our past post on photographer Julius Schulman and California architecture.

Julius Shulman (1910–2009), photographer, Pierre Koenig, architect, Stahl House (Case Study House #22), Los Angeles, 1960 © J. Paul Getty Trust. Used with permission. Julius Shulman Photography Archive, Research Library, Getty Research Institute (2004.R.10).
Source: http://www.lacma.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/Exhibition_Main/image/Shulman.jpg

Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design, Jonathan Ive, has been awarded Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) in the New Year Honor’s list, as reported by BBC News. Ive is responsible for the design of Apple’s iMac, iPhone and iPad, among many other products.

According to BBC News, “The knighthood is the second time Mr. Ive has been recognized in the honor’s list. In 2005 he was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE).”

Read the entire article.

Jonathan Ive with a MacBook Pro, circa 2010. Photographer unknown.
Source: http://flipter.com/media/photos/Jonathan_Ives.jpg

“With technology, the function is much more abstract to users, so the product’s meaning is almost entirely defined by the designer.” –Jonathan Ive

Background: In the Land of Beige Boxes
In the 1980s desktop computers were for the most part designed by engineers, and they looked it. During the 1990s desktop computers started to appear on desktops in companies across the world, but they all looked relatively indistinguishable – as generic beige boxes.

A Personal Computer in Every Home
In the late 1990s Apple Computer’s CEO, Steve Jobs, had a plan to bring the personal computer from the office into the home by selling desktop computers to consumers. His vision was a personal computer in every home. The challenge was how to interest the average consumer; how to make people want a Macintosh. Who would get excited about a buying a beige box?

Hello iMac
Then in 1998 Apple introduced the iMac. It looked like no other personal computer.

“The iMac changed the way consumers thought about personal computers and about Apple itself. It gave Apple a vital boost that helped it usher in a new era of consumer electronics that were quirky, fun and colorful….People snapped up 150,000 of them in the first weekend following its release. Apple sold 800,000 iMacs by the end of the year.” ¹

But who designed the iMac? Who gave form to Steve Jobs’ vision? The designer who changed the way we use and think about technology is Jonathan Ive.

Jonathan Ive, Apple iMac (1998).
Source: http://richworks.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/apple_imac_g3.jpg

Who Is Jonathan Ive?

Forty-four year old Jonathan Ive was born in London and grew up in a middle-class family in Essex, UK. He went on to study design at Newcastle Polytechnic in the mid-1980s. As a student there he had won awards for student design from the Royal Society of Arts.² “By the time he graduated, Ive was already something of a legend in British design circles.”³ After graduation he worked for Tangerine Design in London, but left a few years later for California to join Apple in 1992.³

Ive at Apple
Apple was experiencing hard economic times during Ive’s early years there.  The company was “hemorrhaging money and market share;…it was the whipping boy of Wall Street and the business press.”³  At that time Ive was torn between his desire to maintain design innovation and the need to appease corporate cost cutters. Furthermore, Ive was turning out good work during those years but became frustrated at the lack of attention given to his projects.³

In 1997 Steve Jobs returned to take control of the company he had founded, and everything turned around for Ive. According to author Donald A. Norman, “Jobs said: ‘This is the direction we’re going,’ and he unleashed Jonathan to make it happen.”² The early working relationship between the two men, however, did have a rocky start. Jobs legendarily could be a tyrant and not always the easiest person to work with. Valarie Sobolewski, a long time software engineer at Apple recalled, “Jonathan took his share of beatings early on.”²

Jonathan Ive showing off a MacBook Pro, circa 2010.

Jobs, however, recognized Ive’s genius and soon named him Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design.¹ Ive would lead Apple’s design team to develop the Powerbook, iPod, iPhone and iPad, products that revolutionized not only the communications and music industries, but also the way people interact with technology.

Read More

Nendo Collective, Visible Structures (2011). Photo by Masayuki Hayashi.
Source: http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/07/20/carbon_all02_custom.jpg?t=1311796714&s=4

National Public Radio’s Susan Stamberg reviews “Modern by Design,” an exhibition that was recently held at the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia. The show features everyday  Twentieth Century items that are part of then Museum of Modern Art’s design collection.  Read or listen to Ms. Stamberg’s report.

10. 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.

According to an article on the Design Museum website, “As a smoker, Rams loved to design lighters as ‘small sculptural objects’ which should be ‘a pleasure to look at and to use.’ His chief challenge with the T2 was identifying the precise place on the side of the cylinder at which the thumb could apply the greatest pressure to the magnetic ignition pad” (1).

“The Braun Cylindric is part of the permanent collection of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York” (2).

Dieter Rams, Braun Cylindric T2 Lighter, (1968)
Source: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_iI8qckk8NXY/TELW9bo_HTI/AAAAAAAABVM/pEhhcxLWvfc/s200/braun_lighter.jpg

To end this series on Dieter Rams’s 10 Principles for Good Design here’s a video featuring comments made by Design Museum’s Director Deyan Sudjic and designer Michael Czerwinsk during Design Museum’s 2009 Dieter Rams retrospective “Less and More - The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams”.

References
1. Design Museum. (2007). Dieter Rams Industrial Designer (1932-). Retrieved  from: http://designmuseum.org/design/dieter-rams
 
2. Table Lighters Collectors’ Guide. (2010). Braun Cylindric T2 Table Lighter, Dieter Rams, 1968. Retreived from: http://table-lighters.blogspot.com/2010/07/braun-cylindric-t2-table-lighter-dieter.htm