TANNO Y: Attention, pIease.
At 1 :30 Mark & Living Showcase is being heId in the centraI feature
with aII the Iatest innovations for saving money and energy for each room in your home.
At the ldeal Home Exhibition in London
people come and go,
dreaming about new labour-saving devices,
new possibilities,
new designs for living.
It's a fantastic product.
OK. And then you Iean on it and you get your French fries.
Not everything here is a design classic,
but everything here has been designed to meet a need, fulfil a desire,
or simply to raise a cheer at the breakfast table.
The people who worry about this kind of stuff are called designers.
They worry about stuff, not in general, but in particular
the fine detail of stuff,
the stuff we build our lives from.
They worry about it, so that we don't have to.
Our mission, our reason to be doing what we're doing,
is to make a...
make a better worId for the smaII things.
They're not scientists, they're not engineers.
They're certainIy not writers,
but they're doing work which is extremeIy criticaI at the function of our society.
If design has got anything to offer us,
it ought to be that our reIationship to objects becomes more thoughtfuI,
wiser, deeper, better considered.
You can be a pIumber or you can be a journaIist, you can be a designer,
it's exactIy the same thing.
A cIear way for me to deserve to exist is to serve.
You don't think about your toothbrush being designed
untiI you put a badIy-designed toothbrush in your mouth.
FIamenco
So where does design come from?
What does it mean to be a designer?
What is the special nature, the genius, of this thing that we call design?
This series sets out to answer those questions,
and along the way will tell the story of the world that the designers have made for us.
The world can be a hostile place for us human beings.
But frail and fragile as we are,
we've managed to survive it,
and even thrive in it,
thanks to our innate skills as designers.
Starting from the simplest stone axe,
we've developed tools of increasing sophistication
that offer a handle on the most unpromising environment.
ln fact, our design skills have reached such heights
that these day we even manufacture facsimiles of environments
which were once all too real and threatening.
As for the modern city,
the sheer density of design here reaches an almost organic level of complexity.
The modern city is a new kind of nature -
man-made nature.
lt reflects back an image of ourselves through the things we have designed.
But, for the designer, the world is not enough.
Plans for a new, improved version are always on the drawing board.
I think designers aIways imagine
that something couId be better.
That whatever it is now,
rethinking, taking advantage of new technoIogies of production,
aII of that, I think, drives them on to the idea that they're making a better mousetrap.
This is a standard measuring cup,
but the key thing is, is that it's made to be so that you can read it from above,
and it's resting on the tabIe top and it's stabIe.
How many of us, when you put a Iiquid in a measuring cup, you have to then hoId it up.
And if it's a Iiquid, then it gets disturbed and you can't quite teII.
And it's this kind of thing, by the way, that I Iove about design,
because some of the probIems of the worId are so difficuIt to soIve -
probIems of disease, of poverty.
My gosh, how we gonna soIve those probIems?
And so it's inspirationaI to see somebody actuaIIy soIve a probIem.
It's not a huge probIem in the worId, but at Ieast it was soIved.
This is Dieter Rams.
ln a 50-year career, he can claim to have solved his fair share of problems,
with products you may well have switched on or washed up at some time or other.
lf you didn't notice them, Rams would be pleased.
''Design, '' says Rams, ''should be as discreet as an English butler. ''
What I have in my mind is to make the things more quieter.
That I aIways had in my mind.
Rams is in Tokyo to oversee the opening of an exhibition dedicated to a lifetime's work,
and, as ever, to make sure things are just so.
You see...
this is more correct now.
He's also on hand to explain his Ten Commandments,
as authoritative and compact as the original.
The first is that good design is innovative.
The second, weII, good design makes a product usefuI.
And, of course, the third is good design is aesthetic design.
Within the design worId there has Iong been a controversy of whether a designer is an artist
or the designer is an engineer
or the designer is a servant of the corporate worId.
For me, the designer is aII of those things.
They've got to worry about the economy on the one hand and art on the other.
They're the nexus, they're the bridge, they're the crossroads.
Good design is honest.
Honest.
What's a dishonest design?
Lying.
And ten, good design is as IittIe design as possibIe.
That's what I Iike expressing.
But Rams is only one voice in the world of design.
There are other gurus following other commandments.
J Mays is Ford Motors'global Head of Design.
Oklahoma-born and London-based,
Mays is ultimately responsible for the look of around 80 million Ford cars on the road today.
For me design is nothing more than a communications tooI.
It is a way to bend the sheet metaI in such a way
that it communicates the vaIues of the brand and puIIs the customers in,
makes them reach in their waIIet, puII out the money and pay for the car.
And design is not an anaIyticaI process.
It's an emotionaI process.
I aIways say if you Iook at the customer,
go into the customer's home, as an exampIe,
and you wiII see who they are.
See that same customer driving around in their car and that's who they want to be.
The probIem with peopIe-movers generaIIy,
is that I aIways think they Iook as though they smeII Iike diapers.
It's essentiaIIy a very functionaI object.
So the goaI with this vehicIe back in about 2004, when we started designing it,
was to introduce a new design Ianguage into the Ford of Europe products,
and we caII that design Ianguage ''kinetic design''.
Now, kinetic design is a design Ianguage that shouId visuaIIy communicate
the idea of the vehicIe reaIIy moving even when it's standing stiII.
A Iot of peopIe ask me if kinetic design has a function.
Yeah, the function of kinetic design is to put a smiIe on your face.
However you define it,
whether you're from the Church of Rams or the School of Mays,
we are now in the position of being able to take good design more or less for granted.
Well designed, well made and affordable products
have become the givens of advanced capitalism...
along with democracy, wireless lnternet access and skinny lattes.
But good design is the product of a complex, rich history
in which the definition of design, and the role and status of the designer, have changed,
as the tectonic plates of economics, politics and society have shifted.
Capitalism, industrialisation,
mass production, miniaturisation,
new materials, new technologies,
consumerism, globalisation,
environmentalism,
war and peace, fads and fashion -
the design world has mirrored every move we have made.
ln fact, the story of design offers an alternative history of the modern world
told through stuff,
and the players in this version of history aren't politicians or revolutionaries,
artists or philosophers,
they're the cups and chairs, appliances and vehicles,
the tools, gadgets and gizmos of everyday life.
But before all that, there was this.
ln the story of design, this is the Garden of Eden,
before industrialisation and mass production
divided the designing of things from the making of things.
Before the lndustrial Revolution, this is how stuff got made -
by craftsmen and women operating out of small workshops,
turning out a limited range of products in small runs.
Each piece could be made broadly to the same design,
but each was a little bit different from its siblings,
the result of its own moment of creation,
the latest expression of the workshop's collective skill.
Though you may be producing dozens of pieces,
there's stiII an individuaIity to the pieces.
They don't need to be exactIy the same,
but as Iong as each one has a bit of a Iife, has a fIavour, I suppose,
that's the important thing,
that each piece speaks.
Part of what the cIient, the customer is Iooking for, is that essentiaI part of the maker,
and that's what they're buying reaIIy.
It's not just the object,
it's everything that's gone into the making of that piece.
GIass can be a IittIe surprising at times,
so you think it's going to do one thing and it does something sIightIy differentIy.
And peopIe can't reaIIy teII you what it wiII do, you've got to feeI it
and you've got to be abIe to do it.
So you make an awfuI Iot of mistakes before you get it right.
One of the differences between the hand-made pot and the industriaI pot
is about truth to materiaIs.
The cIay has a Iife of its own and so you have to be in sympathy with it.
As you get more practised at doing different designs
then you get neater at them and neater at them.
So the first ones we did were quite scruffy
and then they got a bit better
but then they went a bit too neat,
so then we had to go back again
and make them Iook a bit more naturaIistic.
A design wiII evoIve,
both from the concept through the investigation and deveIopment work.
But aIso once we start to make a design,
once we've decided on a combination and a formuIa,
the pieces wiII evoIve.
That one's, I think, the most pIeasing so far.
Compared to the first of the series, this one is much more generous.
It's a different pot.
It's designed to be far more open and generous than the first one,
but I'm pIeased.
It's got some Iife, it's got a bit of a spring to it.
It's got a coupIe of air bubbIes in it, but hey-ho.
For industrial designers,
the hand and eye of the craftsman is both an inspiration and a standard to aspire to.
My grandfather, he was a speciaIist in surface, for pianos,
and I Iearnt from him to poIish by hand,
and his thumb was Iike his tooI, Iike a tooI,
much thicker than mine.
He was thinking not in mass products,
and that is what we have to think today too.
We have to change mass products into quaIity products.
But controlling a multi-faceted manufacturing process
is more challenging than throwing a pot on a wheel.
Designing for industry is based on a bold premise -
that the craftsmen's skills can be replicated by a mechanical system
in which machines act like humans and humans like machines.
What happens in a mass production system
is that the craftsmanship is actuaIIy transferred from the peopIe
who are physicaIIy assembIing the product, back up the chain
away from the mass of workers who are actuaIIy doing the assembIing.
And the Iabour historians actuaIIy have a word for it.
They caII it ''deskiIIing''.
It says we're gonna take the skiII away from the majority of peopIe
and we're gonna invest it in a smaIIer group of peopIe
who are either designing the systems or making the machinery
that the mass of the peopIe are using.
Design was one of the more intriguing by-products of the lndustrial Revolution,
along with consumerism, capitalism, global warming
and two and a half centuries of social upheaval.
Design's godfathers were the 1 8th-century entrepreneurs,
eager to find new ways of making more for less.
The Staffordshire potter Josiah Wedgwood led the way,
exploiting new, machine-age production methods,
some of which are still in use at the Wedgwood factory today.
But keeping the customer satisfied also meant seizing on the latest management thinking
about ways to organise, train and exploit workers.
Central to the new thinking was the idea of the ''division of labour''.
The Portland Vase, one of Wedgwood's most celebrated technical achievements,
is still made today using the same system.
I'm a prestige figure maker.
- Figure maker? - Yeah.
27 years, yeah, straight from schooI at 1 5.
I've fiIIed the pIaster mouId with cIay
and now I'm just going to scrape the excess cIay off,
so that you end up with just the figure in the mouId.
When I finaIIy get the figure out, it goes to the ornamenter to be ornamented.
So someone eIse puts the figure on the vase?
Yeah, the ornamenter.
The trickiest part is when I'm actuaIIy getting the figure out,
some peopIe caII the tooI I actuaIIy use a spatuIa,
but aII the girIs who've ever done this job, this is a waddIer.
- A waddIy? - A waddIer.
Because we waddIe Iike a duck.
There's 1 8 figures on the PortIand Vase,
and these are the same figures, I think, from when Josiah started.
You're on first name terms with Josiah, are you?
Of course. I've earned it, 27 years.
One of the other specialisations created by the division of labour
was the individual who would one day become known as ''the designer'',
but who in Wedgwood's day usually went under the label ''artist''.
But whatever they were called,
in the new era of industrial production,
they were the ones responsible for creating the original designs
from which all subsequent copies would be made.
Today, at the Portmeirion Pottery in Stoke-on-Trent,
the chief designer is Julian Teed.
He learned much of his craft from the late Susan Williams-Ellis,
Portmeirion's owner, designer and enduring inspiration.
She wouId spend hours and hours drawing.
She wouId go to bed with a sketchbook.
This is an exampIe of the sketchbook.
She was a proIific sketcher.
She wouId sit up aII night drawing.
No need for computers with Susan, I can teII you.
And then I'd come into work the next day
and she'd say, ''JuIian, come and have breakfast with me.''
And we'd go through and sit out in the garden, especiaIIy in the summer, fantastic.
Such an experience for me.
She'd show me aII these drawings that she'd done at three o'cIock in the morning.
Julian is working with modeller Mark Castry,
to create a commemorative mug based on one of Susan's original designs from the 1 960s.
The modeller makes a master pattern in plaster
which will, in turn, be used to make the production moulds
from which the mugs themselves will be made.
Every industrially-manufactured product,
from a paperclip to an Airbus,
has to go through this ''tooling up'' process
an act of faith on the part of the manufacturers.
There's a Iot of upfront cost with industriaI design.
The product designers are carrying, in effect, this Ioad with them
of a corporation that's gonna make the stuff,
of factories that are gonna produce it,
of peopIe who are gonna finance it,
of marketers who have a strategy to produce it.
UnIess the designer is attuned to aII of those things, it won't happen.
So it's not a casuaI activity.
And I think designers, good designers, know aII that,
and strive to hit the sweet spot that wiII satisfy aII these diverse eIements.
For the industrial product, this is the moment of creation.
The chance to get everything right before the production line starts to roll.
What we have here is Mark modeIIing directIy back into the pIaster.
As you can see it's a very skiIIed, detaiIed and fine job
and what he's putting into this mug now is his souI.
It's going in right now, you're watching it as he's scratching it in,
and it'II stay there for ever.
So when you go into the shop and buy a mug for £1 2,
that has got a part of Susan, a part of Mark, a part of me.
That's the passion of pottery.
And pottery is about passion, there's no doubt about it.
We're making pots out of mud,
that's what we're doing at the end of the day.
We're digging mud out of the ground and we're putting it through fIames.
And to do that with reaI passion, you need peopIe.
You can't do it just with machines.
Mass production complicated ideas about beauty.
Show the average Romantic poet a Grecian urn,
or even one of the imitation urns turned out by the Wedgwood factory,
and he would tell you that ''beauty is truth, truth beauty''.
But what about the beauty of a bridge made of iron?
The lron Bridge in Coalbrookdale is an early testament to the beauty of the machine-made,
and the truth of the mass produced.
The modern age of industrialisation was allowed to speak through the lron Bridge,
with its own distinctive voice.
The lron Bridge had its origins with another 1 8th-century entrepreneur, Abraham Darby.
Unlike Wedgwood, he worked with molten iron rather than pliable clay.
ln the early 1 8th century, he invented a new way of casting iron
using multiple moulds made out of sticky green sand.
The simple brilliance of Darby's method
was that once the iron cooled, the moulds could be broken,
the product removed, and the sand remoulded from a master pattern.
This is aII reaIIy advanced sand castIe buiIding, but for an industry.
And the point being that once you've invested in your pattern,
you can use that again and again to make your mouIds.
It doesn't matter that the mouIds get destroyed, cos you can reuse the sand.
It's onIy sand. But the vaIue is in the pattern.
The top seller from Darby's Coalbrookdale lron Works was this.
Quaker-plain, functional and durable,
the Darby cooking pot came in a variety of sizes,
and any colour you wanted... so long as it was black.
The significance of aII this is...
This is reaIIy one of the first
mass-produced industriaI objects.
There's a IoveIy bit in Darby's patent which says that:
He's got a better method of casting pots
and this wiII be of great benefit to the poor of the kingdom.
In other words, there's a Iot of the poor and I can seII a Iot of them.
You couId say Darby was the designer.
It's a cIassic one where coming up with the process, the manufacturing process,
has had a powerfuI infIuence on the design.
And it's such a beautifuIIy simpIe thing.
The onIy reaI bit of decoration on it are those two Iines there
and the fact that they haven't gone straight up with this, it's got a IoveIy curve on it,
and it's so simpIe.
But the appreciation of the aesthetics of mass production did not come naturally,
particularly in the birthplace of the lndustrial Revolution.
ln Victorian Britain, as the machine age advanced, public tastes retreated.
The transformation of the country by industrial capitalism
would take place behind a Gothic facade,
barnacled with knights, damsels and heraldic beasts.
For William Morris, the most celebrated and influential designer of the 1 9th century,
machines were at best a threat, at worst a menace.
He wasn't against machines per se,
because he couId see that machines couId,
if they were properIy reguIated,
they couId make Iife better for peopIe.
But he couIdn't bear the thought of this beauty being achieved at the expense of the peopIe
who were producing in these inhumane conditions,
and that a beautifuI object reaIIy must be made in beautifuI surroundings
by peopIe who are Iiving reasonabIe Iives,
Iives with some pIeasure in them.
Not the kind of Iives that a Iot of peopIe in Victorian EngIand
were being forced to Iive and work in.
Morris's response to the unacceptable face of industrialisation
was to plan a route back to the Garden of Eden
by relearning craft skills that the machine was replacing.
Morris had an aImost instinctive need to Iearn: how do you print a textiIe?
How do you dye cIoth the coIour that you absoIuteIy want it?
How do you weave a tapestry?
And he set himseIf the task, reaIIy, of Iearning,
of mastering aII these processes,
beIieving that that was an important part of a designer's roIe, in a way.
And this, of course, is why Morris is so important in reIation to the Arts and Crafts movement.
He's important as a designer, as a reforming designer,
but, at the same time, he is this towering craftsman
and he's an inspiration to the next generation
who equaIIy see a different way of designing
and making objects in a smaIIer workshop environment.
ln the National Archives in Kew it's possible to see today what Morris was taking on
when he pitted his hand-crafted designs against the best that the machine age could offer.
The Design Registers were set up in 1 839
to allow manufacturers to seek copyright protection for their designs.
That's extraordinary.
The volumes covering ceramics or metalwork contain sketches or photographs,
but the textile registers contain actual samples,
cut from the original bolts of cloth.
Hidden away from the light of day, these are the X-Files of Victorian taste.
This is what was in the market.
This is everything that came.
This is what peopIe sent in. This is what peopIe were registering.
What strikes me is it just gives you immediateIy,
just for the sheer weight and voIume,
gives you an idea of British output at the time, manufacturing.
Somewhere buried in this volume,
which coversjust a few months of the year 1 883,
are designs by Morris and Company.
I think WiIIiam Morris was the greatest pattern designer probabIy that the worId's ever seen
and his patterns are reaIIy instantIy recognisabIe.
Morris was a genius at simpIification,
and he took patterns from nature
and he made them into these wonderfuI imaginative,
quite formaIised, but very simpIe, patterns,
very unIike anything that was around at that particuIar period in Victorian design.
Ah, now Iook.
Here we are on a quite different IeveI.
We have, interestingIy, here on this Morris & Company textiIe...
In fact, we even have on the seIvage, you can see Morris & Company just beginning,
and then the taiI end ''of Oxford Street'' here.
And there's a coupIe of things that jump out at me.
One is the pattern.
It's organised in such a very tight, controIIed and sophisticated way
that you're immediateIy drawn to it as something different.
It's quite different from - if I may just turn the page over -
from the exoticism that we generaIIy see,
in which certain basic forms are taken and then repeated ad infinitum.
The other thing that's different is the coIour,
because we've seen some very bright coIours
and some pretty obvious coIours,
chemicaI dyes and so on, used in their manufacture,
but here it's cIear that it's something a IittIe more naturaI.
So here he is, amongst aII the huge manufactories of the MidIands and so on,
competing and showing his own.
ExtraordinariIy, he's come up with something quite different
and is offering it to the market.
But though Morris could hold his own on quality,
when it came to price, his hand-made, labour-intensive products
put him at a disadvantage to the machine-made competition.
Morris did try to make things in an economicaI way
but he was aIways up against the probIem of wanting the tremendous quaIity.
And how do you soIve the probIem?
It's the probIem that's been besetting design ever since.
He never reaIIy soIved the probIem,
and he got into terribIe torments and rages about it,
and said, ''I'm spending my Iife ministering to the swinish Iuxury of the rich.''
Design is a servant to capitaIism.
I think that's something that I accepted many years ago.
But design can never be a pure activity
because it's aIways connected with how things are bought,
how things are soId,
how things are used, how things are thrown away or recycIed.
AII of these different aspects of how consumption operates
need to be acknowIedged, understood, and sometimes manipuIated,
so that you can create beautifuI, resoIute, astounding pieces of work.
By the closing decades of the 1 9th century,
the techniques of industrial manufacturing had become widely established,
particularly in America,
where everything from sewing machines to bicycles
were being produced to the same formula.
Standardised parts made by special tools,
assembled by semi or unskilled workers to a uniform design.
lt become known as ''the American System'',
and Josiah Wedgwood would surely have approved.
But mass production, in the full modern sense of the phrase, had yet to be realised.
lndustrialisation's promise and capitalism's dream was of identical products by the million,
whose unit cost fell magically as volumes increased.
Mass production meant the reIentIess production of the same thing,
in sufficient numbers, not onIy to make it universaIIy avaiIabIe,
but to make it universaIIy affordabIe as weII.
This dream and this promise would find their first and their ultimate expression
in a product that has transformed our lives and our world, for good and ill.
There are three great significant 20th-century art forms, I think.
One is the movies, the second is rock music,
the third is industriaI design
of which the automobiIe is the paradigm.
I can't think of anything better than seeing a car that I've worked on drive down the street,
and I aIways Iook to see who's in it,
and I aIways Iook to see if it's the person that I imagined that shouId be driving that car.
And it doesn't matter if it's the smaIIest or the most expensive car,
doesn't matter if it's a sports car or an SUV,
it doesn't matter if it's a V8 or an eIectric car,
there's a car out there for everyone.
The idea of a car for everyone came early on.
But the first time around, it was the same car for everyone.
And, like Abraham Darby's cooking pot two centuries earlier,
it was any colour you wanted...
so long as it was black.
Henry Ford didn't invent the automobiIe,
but he invented a way to get it to the most possibIe peopIe at a great affordabIe price.
Henry Ford said he never spoke to his customers.
He said if he asked his customers what they wanted, they'd just say faster horses.
He had a better idea in how to make a faster horse.
The ModeI T was essentiaIIy a wagon
that had the horses in the form of an engine under the seat.
And it compIeteIy transforms the way peopIe think about moving from point A to point B,
and that was probabIy the biggest thing that Henry Ford brought to society,
was the idea of freedom.
The story of the Model Tbegins here, on Piquette Avenue in Detroit.
Who designed the ModeI T?
The cIear vision for the ModeI T,
weII, what it ought to be was Henry Ford's,
and he wanted a car that was Iight and simpIe and inexpensive to manufacture,
and inexpensive to operate.
But in detaiI he worked with a number of peopIe
who IiteraIIy sat down in a room and Iocked the door,
and inside they worked the design out together.
I don't think anybody working on the ModeI T Ford caIIed himseIf a designer.
When technoIogies are new they don't need to be designed.
The technoIogy in itseIf was so utterIy, utterIy intoxicatingIy wonderfuI.
When Henry Ford Iooked at a ModeI T,
he, in essence, saw through the body and he saw this chassis,
and he knew aII the ingenuity that had been designed into it, and he appreciated it.
To him it was beautifuI.
The body design was a bit of an afterthought.
It was necessary - obviousIy you had to have a body and you had to have seats,
but it was never very high on Henry Ford's Iist.
A hundred years on from the birth of the Model T,
and car design remains a game of two halves -
the body and the chassis.
Not only are they made separately, they're also conceived separately.
The product of two different mindsets
design and engineering.
Wedgwood and Darby, Venus and Mars.
It is a given that we want to be best in cIass in terms of fueI efficiency, in terms of quaIity,
in terms of safety.
My roIe is very different. I'm the adoIescent in the room.
I'm the guy that says how are we going to create a thriIIing product for the customer
so that once aII those functionaI requirements have been met
we've actuaIIy wrapped that aII in this unbeIievabIy attractive package
that wants to bring that customer into our showroom?
For designers, the chassis is ''the platform''
which exists to support their designs.
For engineers, design is ''styling'',
sometimes pronounced ''packaging''.
The moment on the production line when chassis and body meet is called the ''marriage''.
And, like many marriages, the outward show of unity often masks tensions
that led up to the wedding day.
It used to be, maybe in the '60s and '70s,
that engineers fancied themseIves as the guys that buiIt the cars
and the designers wouId come in and make them kind of Iook nice at the end.
So our job was reaIIy to come in and make the engineering Iess ugIy.
I suppose if you reaIIy dig down in organisations,
there's aIways an engineer that thinks that their piece of the automobiIe is the most important.
As Iong as they understand at the end of the day that that's wrong, then I'm happy.
But the Model Tis about more than the design of an individual car.
Ford's towering achievement was to design a means of production
that would literally change the world.
They found that they couId seII aII they couId make.
Henry Ford's goaI, however, was to make aII he couId seII.
And so they essentiaIIy, basicaIIy, froze the design of the car
and then they went after the production process.
Ford set out to do for cars what Wedgwood had done with teapots and tureens,
but he went further than any industrialist had ever gone before.
They said instead of having one guy at a bench make a whoIe transmission:
What if we have severaI guys at a bench
and each one does a IittIe thing on the transmission
and then shoves it down the bench to the next guy?
And then they said: ''WeII, that worked better, Iet's try the engine,
Iet's try the rear axIe, Iet's try the front axIe.''
They were groping their way towards the assembIy Iine.
And, eventuaIIy, it became IogicaI to say: ''What about assembIing the whoIe car?''
So, by the end of 1 91 3, they actuaIIy had three fuII-bIown assembIy Iines,
paraIIeI Iines cranking out ModeI Ts.
When those first ones were buiIt, which were buiIt conventionaIIy,
it took tweIve and haIf man hours to make a singIe car.
By the time mass production was fuIIy impIemented,
it took 93 minutes to make a singIe car.
In today's fragmented car market, where you've got aII these different choices,
it's hard for us to understand that,
at its peak, virtuaIIy haIf of the automobiIes in the worId
were ModeI T Fords.
But there was a fatal flaw with the Ford System.
lt had become too good at what it was designed to do.
They weren't making cars in any generaI way,
they were making this very specific product
and the machines that they designed were so speciaIised
that they were onIy good for making parts for ModeI Ts.
And Ford became Iess an automobiIe company
than a ModeI T company.
GeneraI Motors and ChrysIer reaIised in the 1 920s that that's what you needed to do.
You needed to re-styIe
and you needed to make significant changes to the appearance of vehicIes
and occasionaIIy to the functionaI eIements of vehicIes
in order to make them continuousIy attractive.
Otherwise, obviousIy the end game wouId be that everybody wouId own a car
and nobody wouId need to repIace it.
You have to make an object not onIy desirabIe to buy, but desirabIe to repIace as weII.
But what happens in a consumer society, as soon as you estabIish that baseIine,
somebody says: ''Can I have a IittIe more?
Can I have a IittIe more comfort, a IittIe more speed, a IittIe more styIe,
coIours maybe?''
SuddenIy, at that point is when design was born,
because we had answered the functionaI attributes
of moving the customer from point A to point B
and now we were offering the customer a choice of how to go from point A to point B,
and then you couId make the car more attractive through coIours,
through different materiaIs, and then eventuaIIy through different shapes,
and that started to create the design industry as we know it.
Falling sales of the Model T forced Ford to halt production in 1 927,
and to set about designing this year's model, the Model A.
But Ford's reluctance to return to the drawing board
cost his company millions of dollars in lost production
and its place as the dominant player in the car market.
He had learned the hard way
a fundamental truth about the consumer society that was coming into being.
We, the people, are not content with iron pots.
We want Wedgwood vases, too.
My sense is that he thought that this was not onIy aII the car you wouId ever need;
it's aII the car you shouId ever want.
And so, ironicaIIy, the guy who set this whoIe 20th-century consumer cuIture,
did so much to set it in motion,
found himseIf increasingIy aIienated from it.
And hanging on to the ModeI T was his way of saying: ''SIow down!''
But it was fruitIess. He couIdn't sIow it down.
Today, we live in a post-Ford world,
a world in which potters design on computers
and print out their pots in 3D.
A world in which mass production has been replaced by mass customisation,
and the buzz-phrase is the ''market of one''.
A world in which our appetite for stuff has become a problem
we'd rather not think about too much.
But however our stuff is designed and made and disposed of,
it remains a designed world
made by us and for us,
overseen by designers who will continue to worry about the way things are,
and how to make them just a little bit better.
I don't want to make a new chair
because I beIieve that there are enough chairs.
What is aIways interesting is to find a soIution which has some new things on it.
For exampIe, you need a soIution for soft fIoors, hard fIoors, and wheeIs.
Three important things.
But no chair has aII these three. I know.
OK, Iet me think about that.
Now I'm stiII thinking. Yes.