Time Tested Designs

Here are some thoughts about one bad design and a few good ones. 

This is what happens when you don't understand users and subordinate function to form. The G4 Cube was a commercial failure even if MoMA likes it. It was a commercial failure for good reason – it didn't work well. The computer would overheat and the gestural controls didn’t work correctly. The high price diverted consumers’ money from other purchases.

Inefficient designs contain a lot of embodied energy and consume resources that could have been used elsewhere. Embodied energy is the energy (and pollution) associated with a product, including stuff you don’t think about such as mining, transportation, administration, disposal etc. Bad products that are expensive and soon discarded always have a high embodied energy.

Here is the how it was released (20 years ago this month!):

MACWORLD EXPO, NEW YORK—July 19, 2000—Apple® today introduced the Power Mac™ G4 Cube, an entirely new class of computer that delivers the performance of a Power Mac G4 in an eight inch cube suspended in a stunning crystal-clear enclosure.

“The G4 Cube is simply the coolest computer ever,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “An entirely new class of computer, it marries the Pentium-crushing performance of the Power Mac G4 with the miniaturization, silent operation and elegant desktop design of the iMac. It is an amazing engineering and design feat, and we’re thrilled to finally unveil it to our customers.”

Old designs that show how it’s done 

It is a shame to be negative all the time. Hopefully love and creation wins over hate and destruction. Therefore, to offset my negative statements about the time-failed Apple G4 Cube, I wanted to offer a few old designs that are the opposite. They work great and have held up over time. They are the Cavendish banana, the offset snow shovel, and the Citroen DS.

A banana is a design? Yes, welcome to the 2020s – designers design more than toasters. We don’t have to be stupid about things that don’t involve a pretty product wrap. We understand taste, tactile response, interactions, packaging and all the things that go into a good banana. Joseph Paxon understood these things too when he designed his banana, which also happened to be resistant to the mold that wiped out all the Big Mike (Gros Michel) bananas. It was a compromise – Paxon’s Cavendish banana didn’t travel as well as the Gros Michel because of its thinner skin and it tasted different. Paxon got it right though, the Cavendish has dominated the banana export market for over 60 years and lets me make smoothies every morning.

It seems presumptuous to assert the importance of industrial design in genetics, but design is design. If you get the right people and the right tools and you can do anything. 

The offset snow shovel is more expensive and harder to store than a standard snow shovel, but it works well. A simple design change that answered the question, what is the most ergonomic design for the user? Let’s do that, the designers thought. They ended up with this ugly, awkward shovel that some people hate and some people love, but it has lasted the test of time and it works well.

I loved the Citroen DS when I first saw it. It has an exquisite blend of aesthetics and function that shows how traditional industrial design can work. 

Beauty

The effect of beauty is easier to consider than its essence. We respond to beauty and we desire to protect it. As a Christian, I move the notion of beauty can be moved into the theological domain. Inner beauty are those things that look like Christ, external beauty are those things that look like the Garden of Eden.

In design, I prefer to think of allure rather than beauty. Moreover, art should be gently cleaved from design. Art should not be dragged down by the mechanistic concerns of design. Styling is not art, and it is not industrial design. Styling is a part of industrial design and an important historical foundation. Styling can probably be considered the foundation of design, but in the 21^st century design is much more than styling.

I hope a three-to-one good to bad design ratio is an uplifting view -- I don’t wish to be cranky and negative.