Don't Think Design Guides Our Lives? Think Again!

   

The evolution of the cell phone

   The other day at dinner with a group of friends, I recounted the problems I had with my iPhone X. It seemed to be working after getting a new one though they told me at the Apple store it was fine. It wasn't and to prove it, when I downloaded all the material  from my computer backup, it all loaded THE FIRST TIME,  not two or four weeks of backing up a multitude of times. Most are Android users, something that I find hard to use, and the conversation turned to design. How things, everything we have and use and live by is designed by someone. Rather than brushing it off I continued ..."think of your car, it was designed. Think how you drove here. The streets, signs, signals were all designed. They agreed but didn't think design was that big a thing, saying that since I was a (graphic) designer I would say design was all important. It is but I gave up.

     I walk my dog early every morning and have lots of time to consider things. When I saw two Hyundai Sonatas of two different designs parked to each other in the carport, that conversation came back and I reflected how a single redesign of a ho hum car made Hyundai and their cars a force to be reckoned with.

An Early Hyundai  Sonata. Definitely not a head turner.

     Most people have forgotten the South Korean car invasion of the 80's and 90's. Considered poorly made and ugly, people bought them because they were cheap and had a 100,000 mile warranty. It tended to attract marginal people who wanted a new car but couldn't afford even Japanese cars that were now on par cost wise with many American brands. American quality sagged, Japanese quality improved dramatically.

     As Honda's Accord got bigger, along with Camry and Altima, they also got more daring in design and expensive. Nothing extreme but larger and pleasant to look at with impeccable quality. The Americans fought back but seemed to never catch up. Korean cars merely existed and really didn't enter into the conversation.

Mercedes Benz redesigned what a car could look like.

   Mercedes Benz took the car design world by storm with their 2006 500 SLA, probably one of their finest designs ever. People would stop and stare as one went by and it was definitely not Grandmas car anymore. Nor was it priced like one ranging from $80-100,000 each.

     VW not to be outdone decided to bring out their version of this design in their CC model. The car was lovely but I read in Consumers Reports it was expensive to own. 

2009 Sonata

    No American company followed this sedan - coupe design but it appeared that the Hyundai designers, in their design studios in California, did. They went from ... the 2009 Sonata to the beautiful 2014 Sonata that literally changed everyone's perception of this car company. Just like the iPhone redefined Apple, the Sonata and its smaller sibling the Elantra with their sleek, some might say, sexy looks made everyone take another look. They went from a ho-hum car company to one people were pleased to own and drive.

2014 Sonata

   We are all addicted to our technology today. Every single person in a subway train I was riding in Beijing was holding a cell phone. The only talking was me and the car announcing the next stop in English and Chinese. What would people do without their phones? 

One of the first cell phones!

    

     Yet I remember the very first cell phone, an 8 lb. monster that had a battery life of maybe 30 minutes. I was at a trade show in Chicago when a friend visited me, a lawyer from Motorola, who had their first model. I remember calling home amazed I could be sitting on the showroom floor and talking 2,000 miles away with no cord! Soon though, they got smaller and smaller until they easily slipped in your pocket and didn't need charging for a few days. The belt pager died an almost overnight death! I had a Nokia, Erickson and finally a Razr, a flip-phone so complicated to use that I hated it. If I needed to set something I would hand it over to a teenager and explain what I wanted to do.

Motorola Razr flip-phone

    I can still remember walking into the Moscone Center for MacWorld in 2007 for the unveiling of the rumored iPhone as it was called. It could do so many things that no one could believe it. Apple, so famously secretive, had to do some FCC filing to sell the phone so used the event to tintillate the masses of geeks who loved Apple products. What we got was far beyond our expectations and overnight changed how cell phones were designed and used. Leaders in the field ... Nokia the world's biggest phone maker, Erickson, Sony and Rim didn't change fast enough and are now all gone. What was the iPhone? A cell phone that acted like a computer and camera that you could fit in your pocket. It changed everything but it's all the imagination of Steve Jobs who hated cell phones and wanted something better. And that folks, takes a better DESIGN! I don't know about you but I definitely don't want to go back to the old flip phones.

Gathered around a newspaper. Remember them?

     Another everyday item that changed the way we looked at the world was the world of reading. The newspapers tried and failed a few times to go online but finally papers like the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and finally The Los Angeles Times figured out how to go online. This led to the Amazon Kindle. Amazon famously replaced Crown Books as the purveyor of cheap books. Then as digital became more and more accepted came the Kindle. Here was something thinner than a paperback, no bigger than a hardcover book and capable

of holding 100's of books! They became travel companions to many. Not to be outdone though, MicroSoft, Android makers and Apple took an interest. What was once the realm of geeks was going to hit the mainstream. As Kindle's got better and cheaper they spawned a variety of similar items but it was Apple with their iPad that stole the show. 

    Running an operating system similar to their

iPhone, you could read downloaded books, write letters, read and send email, surf the "net" and so much more. All of this was designed taking what was and making it both new and different yet familiar at the same time. It was said when Apple took iPad's to senior homes to test when they came to retrieve them seniors would wrestle
them back because they found them easier to use than any computer. Pointing a finger beats scrolling over a much larger screen with a mouse.

Even a child can use an iPad!

    Would we ever want to go back? This was the result of design. NOTHING is done without planning and that includes the design of everything.

     And before I conclude let me point out the design of the Constitution of the United States. After the Revolutionary War the 13 colonies got together to create the Articles of Confederation. It was more like our states today. They all agreed to do certain things but it quickly proved to be lacking. No one state had the resources of the whole and after raids on our ships by pirates, markets that swindled the separate states, they all sent representatives back to Philadelphia to see how to fix this problem. The "fix" was the Constitution. Drawing from many sources and well aware of the British abuses, they created, designed if you will, how we live today. While nothing is perfect what they designed is the country, the elected officials, the laws that we live under. In fact, for Americans, it could be said this is our ultimate design! It's design allows us many rights and the opportunity to change what is wrong. Its rarely fast, it can stumble along the way but for good or ill our forefathers and the generations after have made this design work.

Thank you for reading my blog. I invite you to take the time to read earlier blogs where my emphasis is to explore the ways art and design affects our daily lives ... and always has. I share with you what inspires me with the hope that it will inspire you as well. Comments are always welcomed! 

Be sure to check my ETSY store ... KrugsStudio.etsy.com. I am adding many new and exciting, collectible birdhouses and craft items. Many of the items talked about here will be for sale there!