Chap

ter 1

Intro
duct
ion

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-098205-2.00001-9
2002, 2010, 2014, Mike Ashby and Kara Johnson. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
We live in a world of materials; it is materials that give substance to everything we see
and touch. Our species homo sapiens differs from others most significantly, perhaps,
through the ability to design to make things out of materials and in the ability to
see more in an object than merely its external form. Objects can have meaning, carry
associations, or be symbols of more abstract ideas. Designed objects, symbolic as well
as utilitarian, predate any recorded language they provide the earliest evidence of a
cultural society and of symbolic reasoning. Some of these objects had a predominantly

functional purpose: the water wheel, the purpose, but survive and are treasured
steam engine, the gas turbine. Others today as much for their appeal as objects
were (and are) purely symbolic or deco- of beauty. Think, too, of musical instru-
rative: the cave paintings of Lascaux, ments: the inlayed violin or harpsichord;
the wooden masks of Peru, the marble of weapons of war: the decorated shield
sculptures of Attica. But most signifi- or carved details in a gun; or of the
cantly, there are objects that combine the weapons of the mind: the gilded pen, the 1.1 Mixing Delightful
functional with the symbolic and decora- illuminated manuscript. All of these are Decoration and Utilitarian
Function
tive. The combination is perhaps most tools made in forms that express aspects
The Stata Center at MIT (Image
obvious in architecture great architects of their creators imagination and desire courtesy of Prof. John Fernandez,
have, for thousands of years, sought to to make objects of delight as well as of Department of Architecture, MIT,
create structures that served a practical utility (1.1 and 1.2). Cambridge, MA)
purpose while also expressing the vision
and stature of their client or culture:
the Coliseum of Rome, the Empire State
Building of New York, the Pompidou
Centre of Paris, each an example of
blending the technical and the aesthetic.
On a smaller scale, product design-
ers seek to blend the technical with
the aesthetic, combining practical
utility with emotional delight. Think
of Wedgewood china, Tiffany glass,
Chippendale furniture these were first
made and bought to fulfill a functional

3
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.2 Mixing Delightful
Decoration and Utilitarian
Function
A Colt pistol
With respect to materials and design, it
is the combination of elements of art and
science that make it work. Materials are
not simply numbers on a datasheet. And
design is not a meaningless exercise in
styling and it is not an isolated exploration
of technology. What matters is the process
of finding solutions that are meaningful
to people, that enable new experiences
and inspire and create positive impact in
society and in our own daily lives. Today,
people are looking for products that are
sustainable and lovable, and it is the job
of a designer to create those products. We
need to evolve from an industrial society
that is driven by consumerism to one that
respects and admires materiality and effi-
ciency. To explore materiality, we need to
get inside the factory and meet the crafts-
men and -women that make our products.
To make decisions about efficient use of
materials, a basic foundation of technical
knowledge of materials and manufactur-
ing is required. In combination, material-
ity and efficiency allow the designer to
create products that are creative and yet
4
fully optimized tangible expressions of an
idea. It is this idea that will go-to-market.
People consumers buy things
because they like them love them,
even. To succeed, a product must, of
course, function properly, but that is not
enough: it must be easy and convenient
to use, and it must have a personality
that satisfies, inspires, gives delight (1.3).
This last personality depends strongly
on the industrial design of a product.
When many technically equivalent
products compete, market share is won
(or lost) through its visual and tactile
appeal, an exploration of other senses or
emotional connection, the associations
it carries, the way it is perceived, and
the experiences it enables. Consumers
now expect delight as well as function in
everything they purchase. Creating it is a
central part of design.
Advances in materials enable
advances in industrial design, just as
they do for technical design together
these advances allow new behaviors, new
experiences, new architectures (1.4).
And here we need a word that
requires definition: inspiration the
ability to stimulate creative thinking.
New developments in materials and
processes are sources of inspiration for
product designers, suggesting novel
visual, tactile, sculptural, and spatial
solutions to product design. Examples
drawn from the recent past are the
ability to color and mold polymers to
make bright, translucent shapes; the co-
molding of elastomers to give soft, tactile
surfaces; toughened and textured glass
to create transparent walls and flooring;
surface coatings that reflect, refract, or
 Materials and Design

diffuse light; carbon fiber composites

that allow exceptionally slender, delicate 1.3 Function, Use, and
structures and there are many more. In Personality
A bicycle must function (wheels,
each of these examples innovative prod-
chain, gears), be designed for use
ucts have been inspired by the creative (to carry stuff from one place to
use of materials and processes. another), and have a personality
Thus materials have two overlapping that fits its owner (decoration on
the frame, handlebar tape).
roles: that of providing technical func-
tionality and that of creating product
personality. It is here that an imbalance
becomes apparent. Technical designers
have ready access to information of the
sort they need handbooks, selection
software, advisory services from material
suppliers and to analysis and optimiza-
tion codes for safe, economical design.
Industrial designers express frustration,
both in print and in interviews, that The second is to explore methods, and,
they do not have equivalent support. In ultimately, design tools, that weave the
higher education the same discrepancy two strands of thinking into a single
appears: the teaching of the science integrated fabric. That, in two sentences,
and technical application of materials is what this book is about.
is highly developed and systematized,
supported by numerous texts, soft-
ware, journals, and conferences; there 1.4 A Virtual Violin
is no similar abundance of support for The form of the violin is an
essential part of its personality. In
the teaching of materials in industrial
this electronic violin, the ghost-
design. like form both makes the
Bridging this gap in information connection to the original and
and methods is not simple. The techni- suggests the transmutation that
has taken place. (Image courtesy
cal terms used by engineers are not the
Yamaha Corp.)
normal language of industrial designers
indeed they may find them meaningless.
Industrial designers, on the other hand,
express their ideas and describe materi-
als in ways that, to the engineer, some-
times seem bewilderingly vague and
qualitative. The first step in bridging the
gap is to explore how each group uses
materials and the nature of the informa-
tion about materials that each requires.

5
Chapter 1 Introduction

Kara Johnson: After more than 10years working in the design industry, my perspective on
how materials is part of the design process has shifted from materials and materiality to
experimentation and storytelling. In the first few years, I was focused on how to inspire
designers to use new materials and to use old materials in new ways. For the products
we were designing, we considered inspiration and then selection as we moved from the
beginning to the end of the design process. Across all the industries that we worked, we
needed to consider a wide range

of materials plastics, metals, ceramics, Our consideration of materials

and natural materials and a similarly
wide range of manufacturing processes
to manipulate each one. This set of
materials and processes are included in
the back of the book as a reference for
any working designer. The level of detail
included is intended to get you up to
speed, get your feet wet, get you ready to
ask more questions, and to help you to
learn and inspire yourself and others.
The right conversation with your design
team, your client, vendors, and the
factory who will make you what you are
designing will be what makes you more
likely to find the best solution to your
specific design challenge.
In the next few years of work, as
designers we started to explore how
materials could play a role in brand and
business strategy, the role of materials
was about the connection that products
have with people and how the mate-
riality of an object plays a role in that
emotional and physical connection.
stretched from product to space to digi-
tal or service experiences. Materiality
is an idea that includes the following:
a living hinge made of molded felt, the
structure of expanded polystyrene bead
packaging, the rust colored primer that
paints the Golden Gate Bridge, patina
on copper and any other surface, the
texture and pattern of pixels, knit graf-
fiti on the streets of London, the sweet
smell of molded bioplastics. In indus-
try, we see the same ideas represented
in real ways Nikes first knit shoe and
delicately molded sections of EVA for
barefoot running, the fabric-wrapped
Gina car and a flaming surface of
pinched metal from BMW, an inde-
structable surface of Gorilla GlassTM on
the iPhone or the brushed metal digital
surface on iTunes first software release.
After building a connection between
people and products, the idea of material-
ity had become ingrained in our design
process and each designer had the tools

6

necessary to think about it and talk about
it (internally or externally). Over the next
few years, the role of materials in the
design process stepped forward to include
the idea of experimentation. It became
evident, that in a highly constrained
world of materials, manufacturing, and
design where cost constraints, techni-
cal limitations, or sustainability concerns
sometimes drive the final selection of
materials we needed to force ourselves
to jump ahead of the curve. We needed
to experiment early in the design process
in order to break the rules, to see whats
possible and to find new constraints.
Experimentation is a natural part of the
design process. With a wide palette and
an open mind, we attempted to build our
ideas outside of the boundaries of typical
industry constraints: a printer wrapped in
felt, a bottle made of cork with a glass top,
a perfectly machined black micro-camera.
We wanted to use materials to build our
ideas and provoke a conversation about
the stuff that surrounds us and in some
way shift the conversation about how we
design, what we design, and how we talk
about it. We want to use materials to tell a
story.
Looking forward, over the next
10years, the following three themes will
drive the work that we do as designers
and influences the role of materials: (1)
the resurgence of making and the maker
movement, (2) a global market that drives
exploration of what it means to be made in
a particular place/geography, and (3) the
search for a more tangible way of thinking
about, talking about, and doing brand.
We are all participating in some way
in the maker movement. The maker
Materials and Design
ovement is present in low-volume craft
m
(on the pages of www.etsy.com) to high-
volume industries and in between (www.
kickstarter.com) with a focus on both
physical and digital platforms, for the sake
of artistic expression and commerce.
In an economy that cares equally
about what is global and what is local,
the place where a product comes mat-
ters. This sense of place has highlighted
the brand name of each country, city
where stuff is made. Would you rather
buy a product Made-in-Korea or Made-
In-Japan? Do you know the difference?
Does it matter? Apples products are
Designed-In-California, Made-In-China.
Its part of their story. What is Made-In-
Iran? What is Made-In-Williamsburg?
Where is Williamsburg? The story and
the meaning of each place and how the
culture of making has evolved has and
will influence the design process more
and more as we want to fall in love with
products and stories that are global and
local.
What if your brand is made in the fac-
tory? What if the choices you make about
fabric, metal, or plastic; injection molding,
welding, or stitching matter as much as
the tagline, celebrity endorsement, or logo
you choose. Your brand is manufactured,
not managed. Your brand is a sum of the
signature moments you create where peo-
ple can physically connect to your brand.
Your product is your story, your story is
your product. The strategy isnt finished
until the design is. For some companies,
in some industries, for some consumers,
brand is built from the inside-out (1.5),
from material to product to identity and
digital experiences to systems and the
7
Chapter 1 Introduction

organization. When brand is built from
the inside-out, elements of materiality and
making matter most. Design plays the role
of connecting materials to a bigger story.
This book is about the core ingredients
of product design materials are the ingre-
dients designers use to imagine, create, and
modify an idea so that when it is made it
becomes more than an object or a prod-
uct, part of a bigger system of storytelling
and experiences. We want to inspire and
guide designers to build something that is
extraordinary and iconic, something that
has its own voice, its own story.

1.5 Built Brand

Building brands with a focus on
product...from the inside-out...
starting with materials as the key
ingredient to a complete (36)
brand experience.

8
 Materials and Design

Mike Ashby: There are three kinds of materials-related books with a design focus. The
first are inspirational, relying on images to showcase materials, accompanied by text that
expresses the emotional and aesthetic response of the writer. The second are books on
material selection in engineering design, developing systematic methods of matching
material choice to the mechanical thermal, electro-magnetic, and environmental
constraints set by the technical requirements of the design. The third of which this
book is an example seeks to connect and blend the approaches of the other two.

My background is in physics, materials there are embedded cultural values in

science, and engineering colored by an
itinerant history early schooling in
Australia, later in Manchester, England,
then Belfast, Northern Ireland,
University at Queens University, Belfast,
then Cambridge, England, 3years in the
Institut fr Metalphysik, Gttingen,
Germany, nine in the Division of Applied
Physics at Harvard, Cambridge, Mass,
then back to Cambridge, England, in the
Engineering Department, together with
a 3-year visiting professorship at the
Royal College of Art in London, UK.
Switching environments has its chal-
lenges even in this connected world,
each location that differ from those you
know. It teaches you how to observe (if
only to help you acquire protective
camouflage), to listen to unfamiliar
points of view expressed in unfamiliar
ways, and to look for overarching
concepts rather than fine detail.
This background hardly qualifies me
to write about Industrial Design, but
here Karas fascination with design and
unquenchable enthusiasm provided
complementary stimulus together with
access to designers both in the UK and
the US. The collaboration, somehow,
produced this book.

9
Chapter 1 Introduction

Further Reading

There is a considerable literature on product design, some of it comprehensible, some not. Useful
sources are listed, with isbn number and a brief commentary, at the end of each chapter. Those listed
below are a good starting point.

Baxter, M. (1995) Product Design, Chapman and Hall, London, uk. isbn 0-7487-4197-6. (This ambi-
tious book, which aims at an understanding of the entire product design process, covers design for
appearance, for manufacture, for low cost, for reliability, and for environmental responsibility. A
useful introduction, written in simple language.)

Clark, P. and Freeman, J. (2000) Design, a Crash Course, The Ivy Press Ltd, Watson-Guptil Publications,
bpi Communications Inc. New York, ny, usa. isbn 0-8230-0983-1. (An entertainingly-written scoot through
the history of product design from 5000 bc to the present day.)

Coates, D. (2003) Watches Tell More than the Time, McGraw-Hill, New York, ny, usa. isbn 0-07-136243-6.
(An analysis of the aesthetics, associations and perceptions of products past and present with examples,
many drawn from automobile design.)

Dormer, P. (1993) Design since 1945, Thames and Hudson, London, uk. isbn 0-500- 20269-9.
(A well-illustrated and inexpensive paperback documenting the influence of industrial design in
furniture, appliances, and textiles a history of contemporary design that complements the wider-
ranging history of Haufe (1998), q.v.)

Forty, A. (1986) Objects of Desire Design in Society since 1750, Thames and Hudson, London, uk.
isbn 0-500-27412-6. (A refreshing survey of the design history of printed fabrics, domestic products,
office equipment, and transport system. The book is mercifully free of eulogies about designers, and
focuses on what industrial design does, rather than who did it. The black and white illustrations are
disappointing, mostly drawn from the late 19th or early 20th centuries, with few examples of contem-
porary design.)

Haufe, T. (1998) Design, a Concise History, Laurence King Publishing, London, uk (originally in German).
isbn 1-85669-134-9. (An inexpensive soft-cover publication. Probably the best introduction to industrial
design for students (and anyone else). Concise, comprehensive, clear, and with intelligible layout and
good, if small, color illustrations.)

Jordan, P.S. (2000) Designing Pleasurable Products, Taylor and Francis, London, uk.
isbn 0-748-40844-4. (Jordan, Manager of Aesthetic Research and Philips Design, argues that
products today must function properly, must be usable, and must also give pleasure. Much of the
book is a description of market-research methods for eliciting reactions to products from users.)

Julier, G. (1993) Encyclopedia of 20th Century Design and Designers, Thames & Hudson, London,
uk. isbn 0-500-20261-3. (A brief summary of design history with good pictures and discussions of the
evolution of product designs.)

Manzini, E. (1989) The Material of Invention, The Design Council, London, uk. isbn 0-85072-247-0.
(Intriguing descriptions of the role of material in invention here meaning creative design. The
translation from Italian uses an interesting vocabulary, one unusual in a text on materials, and gives a
commentary with many insights.)

10
 Further Reading

McDermott, C. (1999) The Product Book, d & ad in association with Rotovison, uk. (50 essays by
respected designers who describe their definition of design, the role of their respective companies
and their approach to product design.)

Norman, D.A. (1998) The Design of Everyday Things, mit Press, London, uk. isbn 0-385- 26774-6. (A
book that provides insight into the design of products with particular emphasis on ergonomics and
ease of use.)

Vezzoli, C. and Manzini, E. (2008) Design for Environmental Sustainability, Springer-Verlag, London,
uk.isbn 978-1-84800-162-6. (A book co-authored by the writer of The Materials of Invention describ-
ing tools and strategies for integrating environmental requirements into product development.)

11