Shifting Times of Industrial Design

The services provided by most professions are rarely unknown. The Graphic Designer uses visual representations to ascribe emotion and information. The Architect designs flow patterns and structures. The writer, institutes the language in ways to envoke imagination and wonder.

Having worked in the industrial design profession for twelve years now, I can tell you it’s not just the clients who are unsure. Industrial design professionals are still in discussion as to what it is they specifically do. I have had clients ask why they need an industrial designer. Others have misconstrued us as designing big machines.

There is still conversation within the design community as to the agreed definition. The ICSID (Industrial Council of Societies of Industrial Design) named the theme just two years ago World Industrial Design Day as, “What is industrial design today and what does an industrial designer do?”

Historically speaking, the term, industrial design dates back to 1919 by the first named industrial designer, Joseph Claude Sinel. The term itself predates him by nearly a decade. So what’s all the confusion about?

The roots of the industrial designer rose out of the Industrial Revolution when the advent of mechanized production was ramping up, post steam engine hoopla. Craft quickly became shadowed by the mass-production techniques the machine allotted.

This “mass-production” enterprise has carried itself for nearly 100 years giving way to consumer goods made in one country, assembled in another and shipped to another for final sale. To keep up with demand world of production has grown along with globalization and the exponential growth of population. Around the early 1900’s the world population was just under two billion and within one hundred years has soared to seven billion and as the rate of human population expanded so did the optimization and scaling of industry and designers with it.

A shift is slowly amassing in the minds of the people as the term ‘growth’ is being placed more and more under the microscope. The industrial design profession is centrally empathic and human-centered. Because of this, industrial designers are engaging with the people at a more root level to understand this shift in defining growth.

Industrial designers are good at understanding growth, because not surprisingly the industrial design profession was predicated on growth; growth of people, growth of products and growth in economies. We are good at designing for scalability, but as scalability is now being pressured by the availability of resources, and increasing prices from demand the people are asking hard questions about what it is they truly need and what it is they can do without.

People are starting to take the time in communities to redefine what it is they want for themselves and in their environments making thoughtful decisions about their purchasing behaviors. As such, the industrial designer is shifting into more and more inclusive industries of service design.

I myself have worked in the world of products and consumer goods like any other industrial designer, but also on projects that span rooftop gardens, master planning of central neighborhoods, eco-indicator databases for environmental footprinting, net-zero home design, to understanding impacts of material choices for safety in use, disposal, and upcyclability.

We are no longer the form factor guys sitting in car galleries and talking about how a particular ‘line’ within the form envokes a particular feeling. We are becoming more aware of the ever-evolving complexities and context that design has and how it shapes everyday life. We are listening to the citizen’s wants and desires to offer solutions to increase ways of living manufacturing a balance to the continued pressures of waste, environmental degradation, disenfranchised societal casts and resource allocation.

The redefining of growth as it is quickly being perceived by many to be the catalyst for increased inequality world wide and has propelled the focus on the well-being of humanity and the planet. As a parlay, industrial designers have jumped on this design challenge full bore to investigate core concerns that people all around the globe have and solve these challenges.

These challenges are immense in scope. Rest assured industrial designers are a breed of connect-the-dots kind of people and we will continue to assist in shaping the world through better design. It’s in our nature, not our definition.