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| From http://www.helveticafilm.com/ |
I hadn't watched movies in theaters for almost a year, and I used to see it every week back then. The last one that I saw was
the September Issue: a documentary on Anna Wintour, American Vogue's editor-in-chief and fashion industry. The reason for no longer going to movie theaters is mainly because emotions aroused are too exhausting. And I don't like to be absorbed in a sense of being unaware of myself for that long. I'm just the type who gets "into" a good book, a movie or music. At least for now, I avoid movies, TV shows and music, if possible.
Thailand Creative Design Center (TCDC) sponsored the screenings of
Objectified and
Helvetica, to commemorate its 5th anniversary.
Objectified tells stories of industrial designs and productions. By "industrial," it means something that are mass produced, or it can be thought that they are produced for the mass. I love seeing the design process: from the brainstorming sessions, to the drawing boards or computer-aided design (CAD), to rapid prototyping and into production. I never thought that designers have to design not just a tangible product but also production processes. A very good example of this is MacBook Air where its designer proudly explains how a single sheet of metal gets transformed to a keyboard cover; many CNC (Computer Numerical Control. I looked up) processes are involved.
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| Dieter Rams |
A German founder or CEO of Braun, Dieter Ram, was also interviewed. The guy looked absolutely tidy and in control. He talked about ten principles of good design (Of course, I didn't remember, but googled
it). A good design (1) is innnovative; (2) makes a product useful; (3) is aesthetic; (4) makes a product understandable; (5) is unobstrusive; (6) is honest; (7) long-lasting; (8) is through, down to the last detail; (9) is environmentally friendly; and (10) is as little design as possible.
I was touched when the narrator said that all the stuff that surround us were subject to someone's decisions at some point before they got into our hands. Objects are related to us, not only because we use them, but we also identify ourselves with it, how we project our identity to the world, e.g., cars or brand-name items.
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| Oxo Good-Grip peeler |
Objectified glides through series of items like Oxo wrist-friendly peelers, fancy automobiles to household appliances like Braun and futuristic vacuum cleaners that
Kahim Rashid designed. The documentary presents two opposite point of views of acquiring new stuff. Some designers treasure things that age well while some others like to go where no one has been before, e.g., Marc Newson and Kahim Rashid. Now that we get more stuff and throw them away at a faster and faster rate, we also need to think about how to dispose them. The movie shows us the recycling center for electronic goods where heaps of stuff are taken apart and sorted. Even the much-loved Apple computers... How the stuff are disposed is now an important issue that industrial designers have to think about whereas they didn't have to worry about it generations ago.
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| Karim Rashid designed vacuum cleaners |
The movie progresses through interviews and motion pictures. These interviews of designers and museum curators are weaved together to create a story. To make it feel intimate, the persons who are speaking is shown very close, just the face or the upper part of the body appeared on screen.
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| Marc Newson (www.marc-newson.com/) |
The documentary closes by asking us to look around at our stuff and ask ourselves: Suppose we are going to be hit by a hurricane and have 20 minutes to pack, what we would take with us. Objects are valuable, not in monetary values, but by how we relate to them.
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