Hi all,
You may remember me form earlier threads, I am a product designer (in my
last year of my study) and have to think about what I would like to show
the world at my graduation.
I started out with the concept of happiness and products, you helped me a
great deal with this. I found out that this (as the concept of ethics was
about a year ago) is abstract and very hard to translate to the physical
world.
I looked at “the motivation of the designer” (for the modernists that was
to make the world a better place) and “the intention of the designer” (that
sometimes is different from what happens with the product in the real
world.)
And from these ideas I came to look at a product (that most take as an end
point of the design) as an intermediate product, that will find its final
form with the user.
Like El Lissitzky said “Every form is the frozen instantaneous picture of a
process. Thus a work is a stopping place on the road to becoming and is not
a fixed goal.”
To give a simple illustration, one can take a cup and use it to put flowers
in, than the cup is not a cup but a vase. So the user can “change” the
product.
It is clear in modular systems like LEGO. There the product you buy (the
physical blocks) are not the end product, the concept of building is.
Does anyone have any other illustrations or theories on this subject.
Thanks for you valuable time.
Toon Welling
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