Industrial design

• 1. Introduction

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  Industrial design is the creative act of determining a product's form and features before that product is ever manufactured. It governs objects made by mass production: predetermined, standardized, repeated, often automated acts of replication. A chair, a razor, a logo on a fuel station, a camera you can hold in one hand. Each began as a decision about shape, texture, color, and use, made in advance of the factory line. This is a discipline that lives in the gap between an idea and a stamped-out object. It draws on aesthetics and on the needs of the person who will actually hold the thing. So how did a practice rooted in mass replication grow out of a world where every object passed through the hands of a single craftsman? Who first put a name to it, and what was that name supposed to mean? And why do the people who shaped our everyday objects, from a steam locomotive to a lounge chair, remain mostly invisible to the public who use their work? The answers run from medieval workshops to a 35mm camera that defined photography for half a century.

• 2. From The Craftsman's Hand

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  For several millennia before industrialization, a single craftsperson held design, technical expertise, and manufacturing all at once. The maker determined a product's form at the very moment of its creation. That form depended on personal manual skill, the requirements of a client, experience gathered through experimentation, and knowledge passed down through training or apprenticeship. There was no separation between the idea and the object.

  The medieval growth of trade began to pull those roles apart. Large workshops emerged in cities such as Florence, Venice, Nuremberg, and Bruges. Groups of more specialized craftsmen made objects with common forms by repeatedly duplicating models defined by their shared training and technique. The division of labour that underlies industrial design had found its early footing here.

  Competitive pressures in the early 16th century produced a telling innovation in Italy and Germany: pattern books. These were collections of engravings showing decorative forms and motifs that could be applied to a wide range of products. Crucially, their creation happened in advance of their application. During the Italian Renaissance, architects and shipwrights took a parallel step, using drawing to specify how something was to be constructed later. The separation of planning from making had begun.

• 3. Kings And Their Workshops

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  In 1667, Louis XIV opened the Gobelins Manufactory in Paris, and the scale of making changed dramatically. Teams of hundreds of craftsmen worked there, including specialist artists, decorators, and engravers. They produced sumptuously decorated goods ranging from tapestries and furniture to metalwork and coaches. All of it fell under the creative supervision of the King's leading artist, Charles Le Brun. This was design directed from the top, across a vast workforce.

  The 18th century repeated this pattern of royal patronage in porcelain. In 1709 the Grand Duke of Saxony established the Meissen porcelain workshops. Patterns came from court goldsmiths, sculptors, and engravers, and served as models for the vessels and figurines that made Meissen famous. The model existed before the object.

  Reproduction here remained craft-based, and that detail mattered. As long as a craftsman's hand controlled each copy, the form and artistic quality of a product stayed with that individual. The source notes a stubborn problem: quality tended to decline as the scale of production increased. A different kind of system would be needed to hold form steady at scale.

• 4. Naming A Discipline

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  The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, in the mid 18th century, is where the emergence of industrial design is specifically located. Industrial manufacture changed how objects were made. Urbanization changed patterns of consumption. The growth of empires broadened tastes and diversified markets. A wider middle class created demand for fashionable styles from a much larger and more heterogeneous population.

  The term itself has a contested birth. The first use of "industrial design" is often attributed to the industrial designer Joseph Claude Sinel in 1919, though Sinel himself denied this in interviews. The discipline predates 1919 by at least a decade. Christopher Dresser is considered among the first independent industrial designers. In 1907, Peter Behrens and others founded the Deutscher Werkbund, a state-sponsored effort to merge traditional crafts with industrial mass-production techniques and put Germany on a competitive footing with Great Britain and the United States. The Werkbund was a precursor to the Bauhaus.

  The printed record reaches back further still. The earliest published use of the term may have appeared in The Art-Union on the 15th of September 1840. That issue discussed Dyce's Report to the Board of Trade on Foreign Schools of Design for Manufactures. Mr. Dyce had visited France, Prussia, and Bavaria to examine the state of design schools, and his report had been printed on the motion of Mr. Hume.

  That report described the school of St. Peter at Lyons, founded about 1750 to instruct draftsmen preparing patterns for the silk manufacture. The school was disorganized by the revolution, then restored by Napoleon and reconstituted as an Academy of Fine Art, with silk design attached as a subordinate branch. Students there began as if intended for artists in the higher sense. They were not expected to choose between Fine Arts and Industrial Design until they had completed drawing and painting of the figure from the antique and from the living model. In 1853, Jacques-Eugène Armengaud published The Practical Draughtsman's Book of Industrial Design, offering a complete course of mechanical, engineering, and architectural drawing. In 1934, Robert Lepper helped establish one of the USA's first industrial design degree programs at Carnegie Institute of Technology.

• 5. Art Or Science

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  Industrial design studies function and form, and the connection between product, user, and environment. It is, by general agreement, an applied art, while engineering design is an applied science. The two overlap in user interface design, information design, and interaction design. Schools range across that spectrum, from pure art colleges teaching product styling, to mixed programs of engineering and design, to the functionalist school, which almost completely subordinated aesthetic design to concerns of usage and ergonomics.

  In the United States, the divide is written into accreditation. Engineering programs require accreditation from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, known as ABET. Industrial design programs are accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, known as NASAD. Engineering education demands heavy training in mathematics and physical sciences, which industrial design education does not typically require.

  Dieter Rams is a German industrial designer closely associated with the consumer products company Braun and with that functionalist school. Generally, industrial designers work in small scale design rather than the overall design of complex systems such as buildings or ships. They do not usually design motors, electrical circuits, or the gearing that makes machines move. They may still affect technical aspects through usability design and form relationships, working alongside engineers who assure functionality and manufacturability, and marketers who identify customer needs.

  Definition has always been slippery here. The meaning accepted by the design community is not made of words; it is acquired as a critical framework for analyzing and creating artifacts. One accepted but intentionally unspecific definition comes from Carnegie Mellon's School of Design: "Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones." At the 29th General Assembly in Gwangju, South Korea, in 2015, the Professional Practise Committee unveiled a renewed definition, calling industrial design "a strategic problem-solving process that drives innovation, builds business success and leads to a better quality of life through innovative products, systems, services and experiences."

• 6. From Sketch To Stamping

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  Dozens or even hundreds of ideas may be considered before a single final design is reached. The process is iterative, and though it is often called creative, it is full of analytical work. Industrial designers draw on user research, sketching, comparative product research, model making, prototyping, and testing. They commonly use 3D software, computer-aided industrial design, and CAD programs to move from concept to production.

  A prototype might begin as a scaled-down sketch model. Designers build these through a 3D printing process or from paper, balsa wood, various foams, or clay. They may then use industrial CT scanning to test for interior defects and to generate a CAD model. From there the manufacturing process can be modified to improve the product.

  The specifications a designer hands down are precise. They can cover the overall form of an object, the location of details relative to one another, colors, texture, and aspects of how the product is used. They may extend to the production process, the choice of materials, and the way the product is presented to the consumer at the point of sale. Bringing industrial designers into product development can add value by improving usability, lowering production costs, and producing more appealing products. The discipline can reach into psychology too, and into the emotional attachment of the user.

• 7. Protecting The Look

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  Industrial design rights are a form of intellectual property that grants exclusive protection to the visual appearance of products that are not purely utilitarian. A design patent falls under this category. The protected design can be a shape, configuration, or composition of pattern or color, in three-dimensional form containing aesthetic value. It can be a two- or three-dimensional pattern used to produce a product, an industrial commodity, or a handicraft.

  The Locarno Classification gives this system a common language. Established by the Locarno Agreement of 1968, it provides a standardized framework for categorizing industrial designs by type and purpose, which eases registration across jurisdictions. Filing across borders runs through the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Deposit of Industrial Designs, a treaty administered by WIPO. An applicant can file a single international application, either directly with WIPO or through a national office, and secure protection in as many member countries as desired. The Hague System can cover up to 100 designs through one application.

  The filing numbers tell a story of recent contraction and rebound. In 2022, about 1.1 million industrial design applications were filed worldwide, a decrease of 3% on 2021 and the first drop in filings since 2014. In 2023, the number rose again to about 1.19 million applications. Among the top Hague applicants in 2023 were Samsung, Procter & Gamble, LG Electronics, Xiaomi, Volkswagen, and Philips, with companies such as Porsche, Hermès, Kärcher, and Jellycat Limited also appearing on the list.

• 8. The Invisible Authors

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  Raymond Loewy, a prolific American designer, is responsible for the Royal Dutch Shell corporate logo and the original BP logo, which stayed in use until 2000. His work also includes the PRR S1 steam locomotive, the Studebaker Starlight with its later bulletnose, Schick electric razors, Electrolux refrigerators, short-wave radios, Le Creuset French ovens, and a complete line of modern furniture. A number of designers like him have shaped daily life so much that historians of social science document their work.

  Alvar Aalto, renowned as an architect, also designed a significant number of household items, including chairs, stools, lamps, a tea-cart, and vases. Charles and Ray Eames became most famous for pioneering furniture such as the Eames Lounge Chair Wood and the Eames Lounge Chair. Other influential figures included Henry Dreyfuss, Eliot Noyes, John Vassos, and Russel Wright.

  Oskar Barnack, a German optical engineer, precision mechanic, and industrial designer, is called the father of 35mm photography. He developed the Leica, which became the hallmark for photography for 50 years and remains a high-water mark for mechanical and optical design. Richard Teague spent most of his career with the American Motors Corporation and originated the concept of interchangeable body panels, creating a wide array of vehicles from the same stampings, among them the Pacer, Gremlin, Matador coupe, and Jeep Cherokee. Milwaukee's Brooks Stevens was best known for his Milwaukee Road Skytop Lounge car and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

  Viktor Schreckengost designed bicycles manufactured by Murray for Murray and for Sears, Roebuck and Company. With engineer Ray Spiller he designed the first truck with a cab-over-engine configuration, a design still in use today, and he founded The Cleveland Institute of Art's school of industrial design. The German designer Luigi Colani drew cars for Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Volkswagen, and BMW, and even created a grand piano, the Pegasus, manufactured and sold by the Schimmel piano company. Many of Apple's recent products were designed by Sir Jonathan Ive, the latest name in a lineage that runs from the silk-pattern draftsmen of Lyons to the device in your pocket.