Design is spreading. Finally.
And by that I mean good design. Or its making a resurgence. Years ago, you’d wander through any neighborhood and find contemporary homes designed by the great architects of this century. While Frank Lloyd Wright may be best known to the masses for Falling Water, you’ll also find his homes buried in little neighborhoods like Oak Park, Illinois. Nowadays you have to check with the home-owners association before you’re allowed to paint, let alone build something that isn’t red brick and colonial.
But the times are finally starting to turn around again, and, I dare say, on an even more cutting edge basis. (Good) Design is finally starting to show at least a little bit of an impact on the general population. You don’t have to dig quite as deeply to find it. It’s on vodka bottles. It’s on bed sheets:
And the architects are coming back to the neighborhoods. Check out the work of M.J. Neal who’s been sneaking stunning architectural gems around Austin, TX:
Or perhaps the most guilty of all companies, Apple. Regardless of the constant battle between PC and Mac lovers, no one can deny that Apple has made huge leaps toward making the general public accustomed to impressively good design. I don’t recall seeing any PC’s in MOMA’s collection.
Even the Art Directors Club recently had a seminar called Designism, which unfortunately I missed. Their aim? To “join in a debate over advertising and design as instruments for social and political change. Can practitioners use their talent to shape life in these changing times?” You can listen to a podcast of the discussion here.
So what’s it all mean? Great, we’re seeing more design out there. It’s happening. Let’s sit back, relax, and watch it happen. HELL NO! We need to do MORE. We need to support it. We need to buy it. We need to tell the companies that we appreciate it.
But beyond that, we need to TAKE PART IN IT! We’re advertising and marketing professionals. We make all of that junk out there that people are training themselves to ignore. We make every bit of communication that tells people to buy something, to sell something, to do something. We have a huge amount of input on the culture of communication. It’s time that we use it and use it wisely. It’s time to bring the art back into what we do.
Think about it; forty years from now will someone be paying to hang our ads in their living room?
Photo credit for the bedspreads goes to The Cool Hunter.
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[...] Design is spreading…finally. January 11th, 2007 I posted this at BMA a while ago and it didn’t really get much interest. But I like it. So read it again. [...]
[...] We do NOT talk about iPhone. Everyone else already has. So I won’t. Not even a picture. You want to talk about the iPhone, go here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Talk about branding.EDIT: I want to clarify myself a little after reading Karl’s comment. I didn’t post this to in any way downplay Apple’s branding or design. I believe that if more companies followed Apple’s model, the market would be a happier place. They’re at the forefront of consumer-oriented design, which I mentioned a while back in my design is spreading write-up. I find it pretty appalling that no other company has really managed to come close to designing general market products with the same aesthetic quality that Apple has managed to acheive. Maybe Motorola…maybe (and on a much smaller scale).Frankly, I consider it a tribute to Apple’s strength as a brand that so many people have picked up on this story. And keep in mind, the blogs above are only a few of the Advertising/Marketing blogs from our blogroll. Talk about the iPhone has hit almost every design blog I’ve read in the last two days. It was the lead story on multiple NY news channels on Tuesday. It was on the front page of the newspaper on Wednesday.Cell phones have been moving toward the iPhone for years now. People have been carrying a phone, an iPod, a Blackberry, a PDA, a… Then we started trying to combine them. We’ve had phones that play music, but were cut off at the knees because they were limited in storage. We’ve got smart-phones that have combine PDA’s and phones, but lack music (or at least music in the same way as the venerable iPod). Now Apple has taken all of the above and fit them neatly into one little box. And they’ve added an entirely new interface into the mix with gestures. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why Apple has the cache that it does. Dammit, I went and talked about the iPhone.[tag]Apple, Beyond Madison Avenue, Advertising, Branding[/tags]Technorati Tags: iPhone [...]
"(Good) Design is finally starting to show at least a little bit of an impact on the general population".Remember though, good is the enemy of great.