Industrial designers — Fight!

Thoughts of an industrial designer gone digital

Meydad Marzan
5 min readNov 24, 2014

In the early 1950’s the world began transcending from its self destruction in the two World Wars. This revival alongside the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism gave birth to new and continual streams in architecture, art and design. Streams that clashed into one another with great passion between walls of academies, over the newspapers and in government halls. Ayn Rand depicted these clashes and conflicts in her epic stories, and made a tremendous impact on me as a young designer.

Conflict is the mother of all progress

The storylines in both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead evolved out of conflicts. The conflict, as a concept, was used by Rand as the facilitator of change within the plot. In real life, conflict has the same role. It is in fact what drives the wheel of civilization by pushing rivals to break their boundaries and create better, more sophisticated and innovative ideas and products. That’s how things go in almost every field in life that involves creation, from academic theories to everyday products. One distinguished product of such conflict, that prolonged over the past 35 years, is without a doubt — the smartphone.

The continuous tension between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and later on between them and Larry Page, Sergey Brin and others, created a big bang of products and experiences. The ideological battle between these giants drove each of them to build unique products and communities that follow their set of values.

Conflicts are mostly driven by real-harsh-biting criticism. Though it sometimes tends to be a slap in the face of the creator, criticism confronts the creator’s primal intention with the final result. This confrontation places the creation in context to other creations and creators, but above all, it makes the creator ponder, change and evolve.

A criticism wasteland

For some unknown reason, no tension or battles can be found in the post-academic world of the industrial design field. What used to be the vibrant “fight” arena between the luscious art-nouveau to the minimalistic German design, is now a flat wasteland of no distinct voices. The battles remain within the academy walls, where they are happening on a daily basis between students and professors.

Over the past few years, I couldn't find a genuine piece of constructive (negative) criticism across design websites. Only “good” design gets covered, and mostly in a superficial manner, focusing on imagery and text written by creators themselves. Reporters and bloggers sometimes add their little flattery to the piece, sustaining the critical vacuum. Websites such as Designboom and others have become nothing more than a “mood board”, missing their call of duty in keeping this industry kicking and evolving. The only discussion out there is based entirely on talkbacks and comments, where amateurs can freely express their thoughts. This over democratization of the discussion brings it down to the lowest common grounds.

One example of this non-critical approach would be the story of the “New Beretta Design by Marc Newson” story on Designboom.

Beretta side-by-side shotgun 486 with engraving design by marc newson. Original image by Beretta via Designboom.com

Yes, this is 2014, and Marc Newson, a well established designer who is a part of the Apple design team, just redesigned a side-by-side shotgun. This design news item is so heavily loaded with cultural and contextual aspects, why not create a rich discussion around it? There’s so much our community can gain from talking about the moral aspects of designing a weapon, or about the styling choices and the balance between tradition and progress when coming to design such an artifact. Yet, time after time these choices are not made.

January 2013 was the beginning of a change, when Dezeen, another “mood board” website, started an “Opinion Column” featuring specialists’ critique about design and architecture. That’s a true step towards a change, I would love to see more of this and its reflection on all works published and not only on big product releases (e.g Apple Watch).

Who’s to blame?

Why did this happen to the industrial design community, is a great question. A possible answer might play the postmodernist card by saying it happened because today “Everything Goes.” That may be a rude reduction of the postmodernist idea, but I think my point is getting across — there’s no right or wrong, everyone can do whatever they want, for whatever reason they choose, and it’ll be just fine. But just fine is as bad as it gets when you are in the evolution and innovation business.

How dare they?

After the long-awaited launch of the iPhone 6, all tech blogs and forums were flooded with opinions and critique. From the curves through the bumpy lens, to the notorious bend. Suddenly, with no warning, you see all these tech guys talk endlessly about design and you feel as if they hijacked the conversation without having the relevant 4 years of education.

GIF via GADGETLOVE

This ridiculous childish feeling is rooted in the lack of discussion in the industrial design sphere. The evolution of the morphology of the iPhone, its challenge to stay distinct in a landscape of other similar archetypes, and the planning and manufacturing aspects, are all industrial design oriented topics that could have done so much for the industry and help march it forward.

Pick a fight

I’m not one for picking a fight for no reason, but it seems as if the industrial design field is lacking the conflicts and criticism that drive progress and create a real constructive discussion about this field. The fact that design school is over doesn't mean we need to stop demanding critical discussion from our peers and mentors.

Correct me if I’m wrong

Really — if you know of a vibrant and critical industrial design community online, share it in the comments to this post.

Helped in proofing and editing: Sharon Reisner and Shirlee Segev

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Meydad Marzan
Meydad Marzan

Written by Meydad Marzan

Designer & Thinker. Now @Google, previously @Jobcase and @RoomerTravel

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