From A to B in Nano steps

It's not the Nobel Prize... but it's a start. Apple's chief designer, Jonathan Ive was awarded a royal title : Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for his achievements as industrial designer. It was about time that the relevance of industrial design in how products influence life, gets some recognition beyond just literary discussions like Bourdieu, Barhtes, Baudrillard and others (whose names start with letters other than "B"). Donald A. Norman, who worked also for apple, wrote a "must" for all designers: Design of everyday things, and more recently: "emotional design". Which deals on how people get emotionally attached to good design, and how they are willing to pay extra to get the satisfaction of buying a good product. Some of the examples on his book are (as you may have guessed) apple products like the iPod.

Now, not everyone buys an iPod (like H.M. the Queen). In fact, there are for example more P.C. based users, than Mac users. Not everyone has an iPod... many have other sorts of gizmos like this Mini-DVD player. (via Ektopia) unfortunately, there's more kitsch and rubbish in this world than good design. It's again the same old story of the class-pyramid. Let's hope that the day will come, when good design becomes available at low prices and is not anymore just a matter of being fashionable or not.

There are many awards for musicians, tv. actors, movie actors... and combined awards such as the Mtv Movie awards... We get full coverage of that on our local news, within months of anticipation (since the nominations). There are 60,900,000 google results for movie awards, 92,900,000 for music awards , and 157,000,000 for design awards! However, events such as the red-dot design award get no media coverage (except maybe in Germany). So, it is good (for us all designers) that an industrial designer gets such recognition.

Our world is becomming more "design led". I hope that leading designers start to get more attention and recognition for their work not as "stylists" but as shapers of life experiences through the use of everyday products.

ciao