1.1.5 Contemporary Design Thinking

How history and culture influence design thinking

No design starts from nothing. Designers work from what already exists, and what already exists came from the materials, technology, beliefs and tastes of its own time.

History influences design through:

• Available materials and processes — the bentwood chair exists because steam bending was mastered; the moulded plastic chair exists because injection moulding was. What can be made shapes what is designed.
• Reaction against what came before — plain, undecorated modern design was a deliberate rejection of heavy Victorian ornament, and the bright, playful design of the 1980s was a rejection of that plainness in turn.
• Revival and reinterpretation — older styles return in new materials, which is why a retro kettle can have a 1950s shape and modern electronics inside.
• Events and constraints — rationing, war and shortages force economical design, and those habits persist long afterwards.

Culture influences design through:

• Values and beliefs — colours, symbols and forms carry different meanings in different places, and a product that ignores this can offend or simply fail to sell.
• How people live — housing size, family structure, climate and diet all change what a product needs to do. Small kitchens produce compact appliances.
• Local craft and materials — regional traditions in weaving, ceramics, metalwork and joinery still feed into contemporary products.
• Global exchange — travel, migration and the internet spread ideas quickly, so influences mix. This brings richer design, but raises the question of when borrowing from a culture becomes taking from it.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) was an American architect and designer, and one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century design.

• He developed the idea of organic architecture — that a building should be in harmony with the people who use it and the landscape it sits in, rather than imposed on the site.
• His early Prairie School houses used long, low horizontal lines, wide overhanging eaves and open-plan interiors, echoing the flat landscape of the American Midwest.
• Fallingwater is his best-known house, built over a waterfall with cantilevered concrete terraces and local stone, so that the building and the landscape become one composition.
• The Guggenheim Museum in New York replaced conventional floors with a single continuous spiral ramp, letting the shape of the building organise how visitors move through it.
• He designed furniture, lighting, textiles, glass and fittings for his buildings, so that everything formed one unified whole. This “total design” approach treats a building and its contents as a single product.
• He exploited new materials and techniques — reinforced concrete, cantilevers and large areas of glass — to do things that traditional construction could not.

Why he matters for product design: Wright’s belief that form and function are a single thing, his use of natural and local materials, and his insistence that a design should suit its setting are all ideas that designers still apply to products, not just buildings.

Alessi & Co.

Alessi is an Italian design-led manufacturer of kitchenware and household products, founded in 1921 in northern Italy.

• It began as a workshop producing metal tableware — trays, coffee pots and bowls in brass and nickel silver — shaped by hand and on the lathe.
• From the 1970s onwards the company changed direction, commissioning leading architects and designers to design mass-produced household objects. Alessi describes itself as a workshop for applied arts, and its role is closer to a publisher than a traditional manufacturer.
• Well-known products include Philippe Starck’s Juicy Salif lemon squeezer, an aluminium object as much sculpture as tool; Michael Graves’ 9093 kettle with its small bird-shaped whistle; and Alessandro Mendini’s Anna G. corkscrew, whose handle is a stylised figure.
• The house style is playful, colourful and often anthropomorphic — objects given faces or human characteristics — in polished stainless steel, aluminium and bright polymers.
• Products are made in volume using pressing, die-casting, injection moulding and polishing, but retain a high level of hand finishing, which is part of why they command premium prices.

Why it matters for product design: Alessi shows that everyday objects can succeed on emotional and aesthetic appeal rather than function alone. A Juicy Salif is not the most effective way to squeeze a lemon, and it still sells — because people buy it for how it looks and how owning it feels. It also demonstrates a business model built on collaborating with named designers, so the designer becomes part of the brand.

The cyclic process of commercial product development

Commercial design is cyclic, not linear. Testing sends you back to redesign, feedback sends you back to the specification, and a product in production feeds into the next model. Each stage can loop back to any earlier one.

Design briefs

It sets the problem without dictating the solution, and defines the scope so that everyone agrees what the project is.

Design specifications

Good specification points are measurable, so the finished product can be tested against them. “Must be light” is untestable; “must weigh under 500 g” can be checked.

User centred design

Users are consulted at the start, shown ideas as they develop and asked to try prototypes, so problems surface while they are still cheap to fix.

Communication of ideas

Ideas must be shared with clients, users and manufacturers, each of whom needs something different — quick annotated sketches to explore ideas, rendered drawings and CAD models to sell a concept, and precise technical drawings to make it.

Modelling and testing ideas

Models make an idea real enough to judge. Card and foam models check size and proportion, block models check how something feels in the hand, and working prototypes test whether it actually functions. CAD simulation can test strength or airflow before anything is built.

Working drawings and schedules

A schedule sets out the order of work and the time each stage takes, so that materials, machines and people are available when needed.

Manufacturing specifications

The manufacturing specification tells the factory exactly how to make the product — materials, processes, machine settings, assembly sequence, tolerances and finishes — so that every item is made the same way, whoever makes it.

Quality control

Checks are made at set points using gauges, jigs and templates, and faults are caught before more value is added to a defective item. Quality control identifies faulty products; quality assurance designs the process so faults are less likely in the first place.

Factors that influence design

Ergonomics

Ergonomics covers reach, grip, posture, force, visibility and how controls are laid out — for example a kettle handle positioned so the wrist stays straight when it is full.

Anthropometrics

Designers use percentile data rather than averages. Designing for the 5th to 95th percentile covers most of the population; anything designed only for the average fits almost nobody exactly. Which percentile you choose depends on the problem — a doorway is sized for the tallest users, while a shelf must be reachable by the shortest.

Economic factors

Cost runs through every decision. Designers balance material and manufacturing costs against the price the market will accept, and consider the scale of production, the cost of tooling, running and maintenance costs for the user, and whether the product can be made profitably at all.

Biomimicry

• Velcro copies the hooked burrs that catch on animal fur.
• Shark skin texture reduces drag and resists bacteria, and has been copied in swimwear and hospital surfaces.
• Honeycomb structures give great stiffness for very little weight, and are used in aircraft panels and packaging.
• Kingfisher beaks inspired the nose profile of high-speed trains to reduce the noise made when entering a tunnel.

Nature is a useful model because its solutions are efficient with material and energy — the same pressures a sustainable designer works under.