Once there was a time when a photographer could count on his brilliantly functional Nikon as a lifelong possession. It was a camera capable of surviving the ascent of Everest and the Vietnam War. In those years, a television set in its heavy wood veneer cabinet was the flickering hearth of the family room and worth repairing when the signal went fuzzy; the telephone wasn't mobile but housed in a solid plastic case substantial enough to strike an intruder unconscious.
Deyan Sudjic is wistful for those bygone days. In The Language of Things: Understanding the World of Desirable Objects (W.W. Norton), the director of London's DesignMuseum ponders the rapid changes in technology and marketing that have upended expectations. Last year's cell phone and laptop are already old school, and the iMac and mobile of Y2K are ready for the museum. And with these developments comes a paradox: We expect the devices in our lives to do more than ever in the age of convergence, and we value them less. "Now our relationship with new possessions seems so much emptier," Sudjic says with a sigh.
Although Sudjic doesn't quote Neil Young, the singer defined part of the problem in his song "Piece of Crap." Nothing lasts. Most of our shiny new possessions are sold in part on a designer's image and don't survive protracted contact with reality.
The Language of Things, an engaging and extended essay housed in a compact book, addresses several issues in fewer than 200 elegantly written pages. Historically, the rise of mass production diminished the importance of the craftsman in favor of the designer, the architect of things. Some designers wanted to reform the world through better objects. Others were willing to help sell anything from Lucky Strike to the Nazi Party. The latter view became ascendant, and yet the nagging conscience of designers was never entirely still and has grown louder in recent years in the chorus calling for a greener world.
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Sudjic adds that with consumerism pervasive, consumer choices are the way many of us define ourselves. The proud owner of a Les Paul guitar looks dismissively at a Fender. Between the Dodge Ram and the MINI Cooper yawns a chasm wider than the Golden Gate. And everyone knows of the contempt of Mac users for PC owners. Today's designers are "storytellers" as much in the business of encoding their designs with lifestyle messages as in resolving functional problems.
Says Sudjic: "Design has become the sometimes cynical process of making what were once serious, unself-conscious products…into toys for adults, pandering to our fantasies about ourselves, ruthlessly tapping into our willingness to pay to be entertained or flattered by our possessions."
But is design art? Sudjic takes the cynical viewborne out by the recent generations of dealers, critics and collectorsthat art is defined as objects without utility and are prized for their uselessness. "Some designs are less useful than others, and they are the ones that enjoy a higher status than the rest," he says.
Designers have done much good work, and also have a lot to answer for in a world where shopping has become a form of substance abuse.
