1) Rag chair (Tejo Remy)

This piece perfectly embodies the role of emotion and legacy in contemporary product design and nicely illustrated the difference between the disciplines of Product and Industrial design.

  

2) Key Table (cultural probe) (Bill Gaver)

The Key Table gets a sense of people’s emotions from the way they dump their stuff onto it. Much as slamming doors are a crude measure of mental state, so the table uses the transient onsets of a new weight to gauge mood. Reactions to emotional entrances are triggered as mechanised frames swing pictures off centre to warn other inhabitants to tread carefully and promote social discourse in order to support each other and resolve problems.

3) 20 sided glass (Vera Mukhina)

These glasses were ubiquitous in homes and restaurants and on trains throughout Russia and have been produced by the millions from 1943 until the present day. It is such a potent design icon that it has apparently even been copied by Ikea!



4) TONARMWAAGE (Dieter Rams)

I could have chosen any one of Dieter Rams’ work for Braun, but I chose this because it is, in essence, a piece of work that has not been copied. Rams set a standard in industrial design that has influenced many designers and, quite probably, is directly responsible for the design style of all Apple products. Tonarmwaag is a hand-held weight scale to measure the load on a turntable tone arm. It was designed in 1963.

5) Minox B camera (Walter Zapp)

Minox-B is a small high-quality subminiature camera that is small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. It was built by Minox in Germany as the successor to the post-war Minox A. For Many years it was the worlds most famous and widely used camera for espionage photography right until the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Production started in 1958 and ran to 1969 when it was replaced by the improved Minox C, but it never surpassed the popularity of the Minox-B.

6) Ford 021C concept car (Mark Newson)

Marc Newson is an Australian industrial designer of Greek origin, who works in aircraft design, product design, furniture design, jewellery and clothing. The 021C was initially a flop, but has become a design classic (although never put into production). It is an excellent example of how innovative ideas come from studying people and their actions and not from traditional car design, a discipline that could be seen as based, for the main, on styling exercises.



7) Design Diagram (Charles and Ray Eames) 

Best known for furniture design, architect and designers Charles and Ray Eames and Ray Kaiser Eames got it right. They created timeless, beautiful and functional products (and buildings) with their simple process. This 1969 Design Diagram gives insight into how Charles and Ray Eames viewed the design process. This visualisation of their design process was their submission to the world design fair in Paris of that year and it is fundamental because it gives designers an insight to the importance of understanding the process and not relying on epiphany when working in the field.