FINAL VERSION Design History Assignment

 

21^st century design is a broad concept, with multinational companies, national companies as well as groups and individuals all setting standards through various methods. Products of the 1990s are different in many ways from those found currently. It can be clearly observed that products sold in the global era are distinctly different from any found in the past. Functions have increased and sizes have become smaller. Products have become better in many ways. Environmentally friendly packaging is one example. Design has also become closer and more important to engineering in this century. Electronic products are chosen based on its function and its design.Travelling abroad is no longer the only way to properly collaborate and create great designs. Through the Internet, various products, buildings and packaging can be viewed on webpages. Better printing technology, advances in chemistry regarding materials, and rapid change in the IT and electronics industry have changed the standards for modern design. Green sustainable chemistry has become fashionable, with more thought being given to what happens to products after its disposal.It seems that now is the best time for design.

Robotic vacuum cleanerRULO

Robot vacuum cleaners have been around for over a decade. They were thought to be suited for large houses. Industrial and commercial use was also widespread. The success of RULO is mainly due to the ability of it to clean corners. Corners of rooms were found to be the hardest places to clean properly. This problem was found in 1986. 30 years were used to produce this final piece.It was created in a remote factory with 40 years of history in making vacuum cleaners. The development department and the manufacturing department are locared in the same place and enable the creation of products together speedily. With the evolving vacuum cleaner market, there was an extremely important goal of catching up. Circular and rectangular shapes had been trialled before but did not meet the criteria.Circular cleaners cannot reach properly to the corners. In 2002, a prototype was created with a design based on the shape of the body of a canister vacuum cleaner.  Rulo was only created because the development ream was flexible. There were no members who knew of the past. The leaderKikkawaproposed the Reuleaux triangle as the shape of the body. This triangle is basically an inflation of the sides of an equilateral triangle. Examples of the Reuleaux triangle in real life include the shape to guitar picks, pencils, and in graphic design. Technological advances include the placement of sensors, programming the robot to effectively clean floor surfaces and combining/modifying parts from different vacuum cleaners. The success of the high-power lithium battery was a major component in the success of the product.

Narita International Airport Passenger Terminal/Never-Before-Seen Airport Terminal

The main aim of all airports is to have a good layout which minimizes stress. It must enable users to enjoy some shopping and dining as well. Opened in April 2015, this is a Low Cost Carrier terminal built for both International and Domestic flights. It was produced, directed and designed by three relatively little-known companies. It has an area of 66,000 m² and can manage 7,500,000 people per year.There were seven designers in total. The designers of this terminal come from three different companies. The strengths of each team member were utilised to the top-most level. Nikken Sekkei was the main company which played a leader type role.The colourful blue and red lanes make getting to destinations easier and uplifting. Blue lanes are for departures while the red lanes are for arrivals. The race track idea was given by Itou Naoki who is the creative director of PARTY. Designs that are stress-free, casual, functional and exciting are things that PARTY likes. NeueFrutiger is the font used for signage.

It was expected that 15 million people would visit Japan in the year 2015. By 2020, when the Olympic Games are held, the number is estimated to become 20 million. Many of these people will use LCCs for their travel. By allowing both International and Domestic flights to use the airport, tourists will be able to directly board domestic flights after arriving from overseas. The concept for this project was to design a ‘low-cost airport’ for LCC users who want to have a ‘low-cost trip’. The total budget was half the amount of a usual terminal. To overcome this difficulty, moving pathways, illuminated signs and luxurious chairs were omitted.More functions were covered by the available designs. For example, the stadium track omitted useless signs and lessened the burden of walking. The newly designed original sofa is able to accommodate more people for longer. Sleeping on it is also possible. The quality of the atmosphere is different from many other airports.As an LCC airport, it functions better than is necessary. The blue and red track gives the impression of race tracks and symbolizes efficiency and speed.

Eneloop Battery Packaging

‘Eneloop’is written in a sans serif font that is easily visible and has the air of modern technology. The designer is 水田一久who played a role in supporting Sanyo maintain its popularity during the last decade of its existence. The name ‘eneloop’ suggests a new lifestyle to users. Instead of a high-waste lifestyle, it supports a reuse and reduce lifestyle. The concept is energy+loop (cycle).

Mizuta Ichihisa is the designer of eneloop. He was the chief designer for Sanyo in 2006. The design, manufacturing and advertising all served the purpose of showing consumers Sanyo’s technology and thought for the environment. Rechargeable batteries in the shape of AA or AAA were hardly used in Japan and overseas at the time. The packaging design had to be different from existing types. The gradation of the blue stands out in shops and gives buyers the feel of Earth. The eneloop logo is also blue, so that buyers have the image of Earth in their minds. The colour white (with a pearl shine) was also never used on batteries as red and black tones were the only colours that gave off the powerful image that was required. Even if some other designer had thought of pearl white, they would not have dared to use it, as battery design is inflexible. This battery, however, has a different concept. Mizuta didn’t only use the pearl white to give off a high-grade feel. He changed the number of times the battery surface is printed on. He had heard people saying how bad Sanyo products were designed. His design of eneloop was first and foremost, a cool one which proved to others that Sanyo products are designed extremely well. Even Sanyo members were against the package design, which was ‘too different’; they had been planning to change it if the product didn’t sell well.

Summary

This design period is ongoing and everything new around us that fits into our lives is from it.The three examples I have chosen are not the ‘best’ or ‘perfect’. They do not reflect all of the accomplished design styles.Design is a way of solving the problems of people from a creative perspective. Although the arts and crafts movement succeeded in restoring beauty into our everyday lives and created a good society in which people and things can coexist, hand-made products never really revived, as the manufacturing industries grew larger. Design was always a way of human thought. The aim of design is to change ourselves, our tools that we use, and the environment that we live in. Design must place people and their lives in the centre. A good design is usually made with thoughts and considerations such as a wish that the people who use it will be happy. (‘Hospitality’) It must be created by people who stand on the side of users without the use of ‘marketing investigations’ (designing whatever sells is not the real way to good design). Modern designers commonly speak without summarizing and leave a message urging the listeners to (re)think and evaluate the meaning and function of design once again. (Esp. product design, as products are still created without thought of environmental impact. Are we truly content with the current ‘design’?) When we feel pleased seeing something that looks good, it is not that the thing is beautiful, but that we imagine the surrounding environment from that design. It is the beauty of the entire balance and the techniques which create the entire condition that move our hearts.

Design is all about the beauty of the relation between people, things, and environments. The ability of recognizing a good design is in all of us. We purchase products everyday based on packaging design. The package informs consumers ‘what the ingredients and materials offer’, ‘what has been improved’, and ‘why this product is better than others’.

The title font is a firm, sharp typeface that is highly readable. Helvetica and the Frutiger® design, (used in airport signage) are merged into one.

Eneloop and Design: Eneloop has the thought and wish of those at Sanyo. They wanted to spread an environmentally friendly lifestyle. All the project members had to stand on the side of customers. Even now, project members reflect and say that it wasn’t just a design aiming to save Sanyo’s critical condition but a design that had the ability to change all batteries into eneloop. In other words, the design had the ability to beat all others. Regarding the printing of the battery surface, white is printed onto a silver surface twice, and on top of that, blue, orange, black, grey, pearl and then a layer of coating. The battery surface is printed on eight times.

Airport Terminal 3: GotouKatao is one of the architects. He says that the group consisted of young people with no experience in airport design. They all had the will to create a new and fun building. At work, the most important thing for him is to have flexible thinking. Yano Naoko was responsible for the furniture. Her company focusses more on ‘finding good things’ rather than ‘creating good things’. Their products are extremely well designed and yet do not look too original. (‘Non-brand’ style) The sofa benches and the oak tables of the food court are examples. Ceilings do not exist to allow the space to feel wider. Signs are situated everywhere.

I have discovered through my long and laborious research the importance of previous design periods and movements in modern design. The designers of this century create for major companies everything from shop interiors to lighting. The designs use the best materials available and have different purposes. This assignment allowed me to think about modern design, and understand the overall history of design.  My poster is white. The trending colour for design is currently white. Black is more of a quality that Bakelite had. (Bakelite cannot be coloured with too many different colours, unlike its similar plastic Urea formaldehyde.) Shiny black is still popular now. My chosen period may not be too well represented, as all the designs I have chosen are from the Good Design Awards website, which is primarily Japanese. Italian furniture would have been nice to include on this poster.

References

Narita International Airport 2015, 「第 3 旅客ターミナルビル」が誕生 PDF

Panasonic Corporation 2016, 開発物語 http://panasonic.jp/soji/rulo/story01.html (accessed 3 April 2016)

Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd. 2006, Sustainability Report 2006 kan2006_j.pdf

Sony Corporation 2016, SST Type Project http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/design/works/projects/sst-font/ (accessed 6 April 2016)