Thoughts on the Origins of Industrial Design

While reading “A Brief History of Industrial and Interaction Design” and “Black People Made America”, two articles that attempt to clarify the origins of industrial design, I was overwhelmed with the sense that neither of them was written for me.

The first article takes an authoritative approach to crediting creators and describing the timeline of Industrial design. The text seemed to be aimed at a reader that was already versed in the current design world, and wasn’t pushing against the current order that exists within it. The lack of womxn and POC creators acknowledged in this text was especially apparent. Because the writer states each key invention and its respective creator without leaving space to acknowledge potentially less recognized contributors, I found myself unconvinced.

In contrast, the second article pushes back on common claims to ingenuity and argues that unrecognized indigenous minds are behind every key invention. Surprisingly as I read this chapter many of the claims left me feeling skeptical. It could just be because of my underlying biases that arose from growing up in a Eurocentric society, but even if every claim was true I still found it hard to acknowledge.

Going a level deeper, one argument from the second reading that lingered in my mind was the ethical implications of the existence of patents laws. I do think it’s important to acknowledge people for their ingenuity, but I also see how problematic it is to restrict the production of inventions that benefit society as a whole.