What Apple product do you first remember seeing? Or using? Was it a MacBook? An iPhone? What is it about Apple that makes its products so appealing, so memorable, so desirable? What is it about Apple's design that makes it, well, so good?
In the Documentary Objectified, the second part of a three-film "design trilogy" (read a write-up on the first film of the trilogy, Helvetica here), director Gary Huswit explores how manufacturing design and the objects we use every day without even thinking about them affect our lives and become a part of our stories.
This begins to make sense once you realize that from the moment we wake up almost everything that fills our world has been designed in one way or another. From the post-it note on our fridge to the potato peeler we'll use to make mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner to the digital camera that captures our favorite moments, it turns out that the objects we use every day come from someone who created them for a specific purpose in a very intentional way. These objects not only greatly affect the practicalities and comfort of our lives, they also make a statement about who we are.
And what about the people who design them? In a world in which most things now end up in a landfill and issues of sustainability and permanence complicate matters of design, the field of manufacturing design is changing. This film suggests that perhaps the beauty of design lays not so much in the created products themselves, but in the designer's ability to translate complex ideas and scenarios into reality. Are designers going to be the intellectuals and culture generators of the future? Gary Huswit seems to be saying yes.
So what is it about Apple that has made it the world's leading design innovator? Could it be the company's ability to create products that communicate with users, connecting them to their product and to their customer's own personal narrative? Is it that when you look at an Apple product you get a very clear sense of the people who designed it and made it?
Objectified claims that every object, intentional or not, speaks to who put it there. What, then, is being said if we view ourselves as created beings embedded into a greater story of whatever, or whoever, put us here? How would this change your personal narrative? How would this change the way you look at the world?
Objectified (Trailer)
