Models in mutilation
those who are aware of the renowned industrial designer Victor Papnek's views on industrial design realise that to live in a world with more design consciousness and less design awareness is the predicament of modern times. Nonetheless, writing something which reads like a critique of industrial design is by no means an easy task. On the contrary, it is likely to invite the wrath of several thousand practising designers who swear by their profession.
However, in a democracy, there is always room for polemics. This inevitably reminds one of the telling indictment from Papnek's seminal book Design for the Real World : "There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a few of them. Advertising design in persuading people to buy things they don't need, with money they don't have, in order to impress others who don't care is probably the phoniest field in existence today. Industrial design, by concocting the tawdry idiocies hawked by advertisers, comes a close second.'
A Western fad?
Papnek's view may initiate controversy and debate, but the increasing influence of industrial design over our ways of life is all too evident. Consequently, if on one hand it has created a sizable number of design worshippers, on the other is emerging a fairly large band of design sceptics. Not entirely oblivious of the contributions it has made, they also seem to be convinced that the profession has been one of the major factors for the rise in consumerism, environmental degradation and depletion of natural resources.
Industrial design today seems to be more of a consumeristic endeavour, contributing primarily to the