Stimulating Consumption: Consumer Engineering & Economic Culture
This week’s articles by Earnest Elmo Calkins and Katherine McCoy focuses on how design influences consumer culture, and the importance as a designer’s role in economic and environmental problems. Calkins (2003) wrote significantly about advertising and product design, where he promoted the idea of “consumer engineering” as an answer to both the economic disasters of the Great Depression and how to improve the standard living for the Americans. He notes that it is the newest business tool where it includes, “any plans which stimulates the consumption of goods by its shaping of a product to fit more exactly to the consumers’ needs or tastes, but in its widest sense” that will solve the economic problem.
In addition, he also relates the importance of “obsoletism” for stimulating consumption and growth in goods where it persuades people to “abandon the old and buy the new,” and how “wearing things out does not produce prosperity but buying things does.” (Calkin, 2). Robert P. Scripps, editorial director of the Scripps-Howard newspapers, quotes that “Prosperity lies in spending, not in saving. For Years we thought that low-cost labor increased the profits of manufacture. Now we know that highly paid labor produces greater profit and the highly paid laborers furnish the customers.” (Calkin, 2). Overall, unemployment means under-consumption and under-consumption means that consumer is not buying. “Consumer engineering must see that we use up the kind of goods we now merely use.” (Calkin, 3). The duty of consumer engineer is to find the cause and remedy that would protect and increase the quality of life and a strong economic market.
Moving forward to the second article called, “A Cold Eye: When Designers Create Culture” by Katherine McCoy (2002), mentions the design impact of culture and the communication design on a global basis creates this cultural imperialism. She refers to the term “cultural sustainability,” in which it describes the critical issue for communication designers and the core responsibility when using “language and symbolic codes, verbal and visual” since so much culture is centred around. (McCoy, 1). In addition, the communities’ cultural legacies encompass shared expressions and quirks in food, fashion, entertainment and humor. With art and design being both unique, they also knit together by communication webs that stretch geographically. She quotes that “design is not very comfortable with the idea of interpretive communities and indigenous cultures.
Comparing and contrasting the two articles, they both focus how design impacts cultural and economic aspects in society as a whole and how much responsibility to give for designers to create a positive and constructive impact on society. It is interesting to see a different perspective from Calkin and McCoy. I do agree with Calkin’s point about the consideration of buying many things and how we should believe in obsoletism in terms of abandoning the old and buying the new to be up to date. For example, with our phones, with many innovative products in stores and in advertising, we as consumers, try to upgrade our devices with something even better. With apple products, regardless they release new products every year and update their IOS, we as consumers try to upgrade a newer version than what we have before. With goods falling into two categories, those we use, such as motor cars, and those we use up, such as toothpaste, the consumer engineering overall must see that we use up the kind of goods we simply use daily.
~ Word Count: 568 ~
Questions:
- Do ethical design influence cultural and economical issues?
- Since designers have a role of responsibility, can they be influence by other aspects in their works such as culture and societal norms?
Work Cited:
Calkins, Earnest Elmo. “What Consumer Engineering Really is”. The Industrial Design Reader. Ed. Carma Gorman. New York: Allworth Press, 2003. 129–132.
McCoy, Katherine. “A Cold Eye: When Designers Create Culture”. Print 56.3 (2002): 26, 181–3.
