The industrial design industry of the 21^st century can be seen as a force for evil. Continually re-inventing the wheel and adhering to fashion trends so as to sell as much as possible to as many people as possible. Another of its faults is the practice of planned and perceived obsolescence, which is the predetermined life cycle of a product

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Our Planet is in the worst state it has been in since its creation. Our natural recourses are all but running out

 and there is a growing lack of space to dump our waste. This is all coupled with an explosion in the World’s population and an increased life expectancy. It was only 100 years ago that the world’s population stood at 1.6 billion opposed to the current 7 billion.

It is in this dank climate of consumption that change has to start, and it is up to the design industry to act. It has the power to change the materials that are used in the products and to cut mass production down to a minimum. It is no longer acceptable to live in this bogus bliss of ignorance. As Plato wrote “ Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil”  

This essay will draw comparisons with the ethics of vegetarianism and whether or not it is our ‘right’ to have whatever we want when we want. The ills of the cult of celebrity will also be addressed as well as the role of the designer, proposing a shift from artist back towards problem solver.

More importantly the essay will try and propose a future, one where unrestrained consumption is not the only answer and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is not realised, with arguments for government regulation of the industry and a shift towards the ideals of the post war Utility furniture. This was a period when rationing imposed strict regulations on the furniture industry and a catalogue of ‘good design’ was produced. This meant the public only had a limited choice but it was all well designed and built to last.

Also, a future that has a combination of mechanised and cottage industries, one where craftspeople exist in every community and mass-produced products that we can’t live without are left to Industry. This idea is brought to light in ‘Design for the real world’ by Viktor Papanek:

“It was easy to predict then that homes using inexpensive plastic dinnerware would also contain some pieces of fine craftsmen-produced ceramics”.

To help analyse the consumer culture we live in and work out whether or not the industrial design industry is in fact a curse, a comparison will be drawn with vegetarianism and meat farming. It is with these points that it will be possible to contextualise and evaluate the industry, while showing that change can and will happen. 

The comparison can start with a look at the use of resources in both circumstances and the environmental impact. First of all, the meat farming industry has been described as ‘an absurd use of resources’ 

 by Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba. This is because the 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to produce one pound of beef for human beings, represents a colossal waste of resources in a world still teeming with people who suffer from profound hunger and malnutrition.

 It is this absurdity, coupled with the facts of animal waste pollution that draw some of the strongest comparisons. The waste from the factories is overwhelming the absorption capacity of the planet, and it’s the pollution of the rivers with livestock waste that introduces excess nitrogen into bays and gulfs; and large areas of the marine world are dying.

 Its bleak pictures like these that have led the U.S Natural Resources Defense Council to say, “According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, livestock waste has polluted more than 27,000 miles of rivers and contaminated groundwater in dozens of states.”

Stories like those are not dissimilar to ones connected to the design industry as Papanek points out in his book ‘Design for the real World; Human ecology and social change’:

“While the reason for our poisoned air and polluted streams and lakes is fairly complex, industrial designers and industry in general are certainly co-responsible with others for this appalling state of affairs”. He also goes onto say in his other book ‘The Green Imperative’ that “The creation and manufacture of any product-both during its period of active use and its existence afterwards-fall into at least six separate cycles, each of which has the potential for ecological harm”.

 Each of these points highlights problems such as ozone layer damage, the exhaustion of scarce or finite resources, production of greenhouse gases, habitat destruction and species extinction. These are but a small number of problems that the Industry releases onto the world.

When viewed in this context, one can see a similarity between design and a better-known industry, food. An apt analogy in today’s world of beef flavored horse burgers would be the similarity between a perfectly packaged piece of meat on a supermarket shelf and that of a neatly presented product on a shop’s shelf.

Each item innocently protests it’s purity to the consumer, all the while harboring a potentially dark sordid past.

But it is here that the comparison with the meat farming industry will stop and allow for other, more economic aspects to take front seat in the debate on whether or not the design industry is a curse.

It is with the industries own invention and implementation of perceived and planned obsolescence that it picks up again. Planned obsolescence is “a business strategy in which the obsolescence (the process of becoming obsolete—that is, unfashionable or no longer usable) of a product is planned and built into it from its conception. This is done so that in future the consumer feels a need to purchase new products and services that the manufacturer brings out as replacements for the old ones” 

as described in an article in The Economist.

A classic example of planned obsolescence is the light bulb; this simple everyday product is the most devilishly devious and it is explained why in a documentary called The Light bulb Conspiracy.

“The industry standard of 2,500 hours in 1924 would eventually drop to 1,000 hours by 1940. Light bulbs were deliberately made more fragile... all goods were to be produced with planned obsolescence – that everything would only be useable for a finite time before rendered obsolete… and consumers would have no choice but to go and buy new goods, as a means of creating demand and stimulating the depressed economy.” 

But it is not just light bulbs that are guilty. This reaches to almost every corner of the Industry, from Apple and their insatiable desire to keep releasing product after product with little to distinguish from the last (see fig.7)

 then to fashion and it’s many off shoots

. Although this last example isn’t necessarily related to the design industry it allows for an easy transition to perceived obsolescence. 

Perceived obsolescence is the implantation of a plan designed to fool the consumer into thinking their product is no longer ‘fashionable’. Therefore instilling in them a need to upgrade and throw away their old and usually perfectly working one.

 It is distinguished from planned obsolescence because it is purely psychological and is not based on the mechanical failure of a product. This is just another reason why it can be said that the industry is in fact dishonest; when it is driven by morals such as these, with no thought of the long-term consequences of their actions except profit. Dominic Basulto of The Washington Post sums it well by saying: 

“While some may argue for the economic benefits of planned obsolescence (like higher GDP and greater innovation), it’s fair to say that others are wondering if our society has struck a type of Faustian bargain, exchanging short-term gain for long-term pain.”

While we can say The Industrial design Industry is guilty of these things it is not solely responsible. The advertising industry must make an appearance in this essay if only to alleviate the blame slightly. Both these Industries go hand in hand in perpetuating the problems this world faces, one complementing the other. Papanek writes that:

“The influence of media advertising has become so powerful as to act as a great equaliser, turning the public into passive consumers, unwilling to assert their taste or discrimination. A picture emerges of a moral weakling with an IQ of about 70, ready to accept whatever specious values the unholy trinity of Motivation Research, Market Analysis and sales has decided to inculcate in him”

The economist JK Galbraith agrees with this but argues that the problem is started by advertising creating wants, rather than satisfying needs:

“As a society becomes increasingly affluent, wants are increasingly created by the process by which they are satisfied… producers may proceed actively to create wants through advertising and salesmanship.”

This point is picked up on by Guy Shrubsole, who has worked for DEFRA (The UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and he points out that:

“If advertising is artificially inflating consumption, then it is not only contributing to climate change and resource depletion – it is doing so needlessly, creating dissatisfaction that it then aims to salve through retail therapy.

This statement then links with in all the others in this essay, helping to justify the claim that the design industry can be seen as a curse. 

But with the environmental aspect in plain view the question has to be asked, why is the design industry intent on reinventing the wheel? This is proved in every design show across the world, all you have to do is step in the door and immediately you are confronted by hundreds of chairs, tables and lights. All of the above are the creative output of thousands of students and professionals. In the UK the number of design graduates has risen from 139,130 in 2003/4 to 177,825 in 2009/10, this shows us that creative art and design is one of a number of subject areas that have become more popular.

 The idea that people are still redesigning the chair is a very strange one when chairs have been recorded as being ‘designed’ from as early as 1366-57 BC in ancient Egypt.

 A chair is defined as ‘a separate seat for one person, typically with a back and four legs’.

 The reason for this plethora of seats with a back and four legs is the idea of creativity. Creativity being the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others.

 Enzo Mari the Italian designer has this to say:

“ Any young designer, unfortunately the oldest as well, do pretend to play the game of artist. Still, a designer is not an artist, would never be an artist. Artists do belong to a different world. Maybe finally, just some get something. Most of them cannot, they live on something else… A word I consider as the one that can let you in Hell. Creativity. All idiots in the world pretend to have an artistic flair.”

Viktor Papenek echoes this in The Green Imperative:

“On the other hand we are encouraged to think for ourselves as artists. This part of our education frequently leads towards totally self-indulgent aesthetics. In our age, it is the nature of the aesthetic processes that users are never consulted. This may give great freedom to a painter or sculptor to express his or her convictions, dreams, demons or hopes. In a wider public art, such as design of every-day things, this can only encourage the peacock’s strut, eccentric perversity, the fraudulent posturing of the charlatan.”

The move from artist or celebrity designer back to problem solver is an important step that has to be taken to help stop the production of unnecessarily self-indulgent objects, which are dictated more by fashion and likely to be thrown away or replaced. This is where an alternative can be proposed to try and alleviate the problem. One such alternative would be to emulate the Utility Furniture Scheme. This step would then have further ramifications, as it would allow for a regulated Industry. One where Government has a strong say in material use and the celebrity culture no longer exists. An industry that with the help of regulation can produce good useful designs that are produced at a sustainable level. 

Tracy Bhamra and Vicky Lofthouse offer a more modern interpretation of ‘good design’ up in the book ‘Design for sustainability’. They say that modern ‘good design’ now incorporates eco design, which is “the environmental impact of each stage of the product’s life cycle”

. Along with traditional definition, which includes points like the function being appropriately and effectively communicated and that it is ergonomically correct.

This would also allow the Government to control the product’s life cycle from conception to death, putting in plans to minimize the product’s impact while delivering a beautifully crafted and thought about object. While this is an extreme measure and seems draconian in style there are some aspects that should be considered. It is common thought that it is up to Governments to implement actions and the individual can only do so much. 

This is echoed on the Greenpeace website:

“We can stop catastrophic climate change. We know what causes it…All that's missing is the action itself. The government needs to put in place meaningful policies to urgently reduce emissions - and to act on them immediately. We need your help to persuade them. Together, we can stop climate chaos.”

This attitude can and should be adopted to help prevent damage done by the design industry to the Planet. 

After all the research a conclusion can be drawn and a more pressing matter emerges. It is the attitude of Capitalism and unrestrained growth that has led to these problems and the design industry is but a cog in this vicious machine. 

E.F Schumacher in his book ‘Small is beautiful; a study of economics as if people mattered’ proposes Buddhist Economics.  This is a system that employs the belief that violence is never the answer and to use non-renewable fossil fuels is “an act of violence”

 in its self. Schumacher also goes onto to say that if they are used, they must used “only with the greatest of care and the most meticulous concern for conservation”

. This conviction throws modern economic philosophy and its monetization of every resource out of the window and allows for a more holistic and spiritual approach to our planet.

A sobering example of damage done to the environment can be seen in China, which with rapid industrialization and an economy based upon cheap, mass production has polluted huge amounts of its water supply. With the facts that ‘90% of the groundwater in cities was polluted to different degrees. Of 118 major cities, 64 had seriously contaminated groundwater supplies…’

 Because of this pollution some settlements by rivers have now been called ‘Cancer Villages”, with Cancer now being China’s biggest killer.

A curse is defined in the dictionary as ‘ A source or cause of evil, a scourge’. With this definition the industrial design industry can be labeled a curse. But this curse can be lifted with careful planning, sensitive government intervention as well as a shift in public opinion. It is our attitude towards this planet that has to change. It should start with the individual and move to Government. A starting point is the decision to become a vegetarian and admitting that meat farming isn’t sustainable. This holistic to life attitude can then translated to the design industry and a frank realization that everything we do as a consumer and designer has wider consequences beyond our immediate surroundings.

The columnist Colin Mcswiggen of the Jacobin magazine sums it up when he said:

“That’s not to say that designers are powerless. Far from it. They occupy a nodal position in the capitalist mode of production, and they’ll be important for getting out of it. Stuff?–?objects, spaces, images, technologies?–?play just as critical a role in restructuring relations between people as they do in maintaining them, and a solar cooker or a free software application requires way more design work than a Philippe Starck lemon squeezer. But any kind of progressive work is difficult if we’re deluded about what we actually do..”

It is with the Bauhaus that essay finishes and in particular with a man called Johannes Itten. A vegetarian with a shaved head who wore homemade monks' robes, led the students in meditation and breathing exercises, and urged them to forget their learning and use only intuition. This lined up nicely with the Bauhaus's early emphasis on pre-industrial methods — classes included stained glass, woodworking, weaving, and bookmaking……the work was handmade and somewhat primitive, a kind of scholarly exercise.

 But Gropius fired him because he wanted to focus on mass-production. Who knows where we would be now if he had stayed? Long live Itten!