Objectified

(The film Objectified and Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa)

How do form and content interact?

When people are looking at or using a design, they do not consciously know it is a designed object, but the designers do. How do the designers consciously know what their purpose for the design is? How do they connect the form and the content of design? It is through the fixture process and functionality of design.

The Apple Company, for example, is one of the biggest and most successful American companies that designs software and electronics. Their products attract all age consumers from youth to elders. For the MacBook Pro, it is designed through simplicity and easiness for buyers; it is so comfortable to use that people forget it is specially designed. It was a long editing process to create a successful product like MacBook Pro. The Apple Company designers revise a single part of the laptop multiple times to make it effortless to use. The long editing process is for consumers to use their product effortlessly. That is the beauty and a successful design.

Sometimes, a design seems too simple and commonly seen, that people ignore there is always a story behind every designed product because it is designed with specific functions for people to use. For example, Henry Ford designed cars that can represent the society. Cars needed to have a few certain facts, such as looking environmentally easy and simple.

Naoto Fukasawa is a Japanese industrial designer who worked with famous companies like Muji and IDEO. Fukasawa’s design of the Muji CD player was shown in the design film, “Objectified.” He states a great metaphor for design could be that “you don’t know what the fragments are going to create…designer has to take all these scattered pieces and combine them into concrete item in one instant.” Designers are secretively fixing product in time to create the success function for buyers to use. End with a final product that can make the users comfortable enough to not feel like it is purposely designed.

Design tells a story. Forms can be easily created, but for them to be a design, forms need to be interdependent with its content. The function and process in editing is what connects forms and content.