Nearly everything we buy, touch and use in our daily lives was at one time dreamed up by a designer.
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I happened across a very thought-provoking show earlier this evening, Objectified on PBS. I came away from the film wishing that everything in my world was better designed.
78% of the world is completely impractical, 78% of the world is uncomfortable. You feel it. You know you feel that hotel rooms are poorly designed, you sit in chairs that are very uncomfortable. And it is craziness…there’s like no excuse whatsoever.
- Karim Rashid, designer
This documentary shines a light on the important role designers and good design play in our world. Design impacts everything: our clothes, our cell phones, our cars, our homes, our toothbrushes, our road systems, our entire world. If we’re going to have stuff in our lives, let’s make the extra effort to intelligently design it. Take into consideration things like how people will use it and the impact it will have on our planet? Products should fit naturally into our world and be intuitive to use.
For me this film highlights more reasons for our education systems to have greater emphasis on creativity and thinking outside the box. As one of the presenters said in the film, design isn’t about where we are now, it is about where we are going. We can barely predict where our world will be in 5 years, let alone 20 or 30 years from now. All the more reason to raise up a new generation of designers.
I don’t see that Objectified will be airing anymore on my local PBS station, but check your own local listings to see if it is on. If not, head over to ObjectifiedFilm.com to learn more and buy the DVD or better yet add it to your Netflix Queue. If you decide to buy the DVD you can get an even better deal on it at Amazon: Objectified at Amazon.com.
Objectified was aired this evening as a part of the Emmy Award-winning series Independent Lens. After briefly skimming their website, it looks like a series I will start following. To see more clips from Objectified and other Independent Lens presentations, head over to the Independent Lens YouTube Channel.
What do you think about Objectified or any of the other topics discussed in this article? Join the conversation by leaving a comment.
