We recently had an extremely interesting lecture about the history of design from Nicholas Oddy, a professor of Design History at GSA. We looked at many examples of important design, not necessarily great design, and it made me think about what makes a product important enough to be taught about?
This is such a complex question because things can be important for so many reasons that vary from person to person. Designs have saved lives, revolutionised industries, been very popular, looked good, sold well, and sold badly are all included in important pieces of design history, and I am going to try and narrow down the reasons I think I feel certain designs are important.
Firstly I want to start with something which is undeniably a piece of important design, neonatal incubators, considered to have been invented by Dr. Stephane Tarnier. When they were first developed they were few and far between in hospitals due to their cost and a perception that they weren’t effective. However, by the ’80s, 80% of babies born weighing less than 1.5kg survived in comparison to 40% in the ’60s.
Tarnier had observed the benefits of warm air incubators that were used for poultry at Paris Zoo and created similar incubators from the premature infants he was caring for. Dr Pierre Budin began publishing the success of these incubators and wanted to share the innovation around the world. The incubators were exhibited at the 1896 World Exposition in Berlin, with real premature babies placed in the incubators to showcase the life-saving capabilities of the new technology. The event was a success and the incubators were showcased at many other large exhibition, and became popularised and common, saving countless little babies lives.
The iconic curves of the Coke bottle exist because so many companies were trying to copy Coca-Cola's branding on their labels that they needed a bottle that was immediately distinctive as Coca-Cola. Their initial attempt to stand out by creating bright labels encountered issues as the bottles were often sold out of barrels of ice-cold water that would cause the labels to peel off, therefore the Coca-Cola company decided it needed to do something different. Harold Hirsch the lead attorney of the company worked with bottling companies around the country giving them the challenge to create a “bottle so distinct that you would recognize if by feel in the dark or lying broken on the ground.”
The design was inspired by an image of an elongated cocoa bean, that had long smooth ridges and a patent was submitted in 1915, a date that was incorporated into the design of the bottle. The bottle was produced across 6 factories and the name of the city was stamped into the bottom of each respective bottle. The patent was renewed for many years before achieving trademark status in 1961, something unusual then for commercial products. A study in 1949 showed that less than 1% of Americans couldn’t identify the brand from just the bottle shape.
The style is still used today and still just as recognisable, therefore I think it is clear that it is an example of excellent design.
The Apple IPad is one of the best-selling products of all time with 211 million sold across the world in just over a decade. With 3 million sold in the first 80 days from release, IPads were an instant hit, offering a product somewhere between an iPhone and a Mac. I can remember IPads coming out and being very mind blown about what they could do, but they have managed to not become a fad technology and have some excellent uses, such as digital sketching something many of my peers have IPads for.
Like all Apple products, their design is sleek, and simple and looks very high-end, but also like many other Apple products they are very expensive. The sales numbers say enough about success, I think it has done so well because it can be used in so many ways and by so many types of people, from children playing games to professional industrial designers.
There are too many huge design failures to choose just one, but looking at many different examples, things have failed because there wasn’t a gap in the market, they overlooked key elements of the design that weren’t the key function, there were other options that were just selling better and sometimes they were just awful ideas, for examples the Cheetos lip balm.
Great and important design is hard to define because there are so many different areas to look at, but generally, if it solves an issue then it will be successful.
History of incubators: https://columbiasurgery.org/news/2015/08/06/history-medicine-incubator-babies-coney-island
Coca-Cola bottle design: https://www.coca-colacompany.com/company/history/the-history-of-the-coca-cola-contour-bottle
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