American Design

In America you can buy anything your heart desires. I
mean *anything*. And why not? What else would you
expect in the land where money is god and shopping is
a natural religion? The rest of the world’s pretty much
the same, sure. It’s just that in the States they’ve been
doing it bigger, better, and badder for longer.

All cynicism aside, this actually goes some way in
accounting for the incredible breadth and variety of
American design, from industrial products to MTV-style
niche marketing. Since the turn of the century
designers have made it their business to create highly
desirable objects. Some would even say that the
industrial design profession was born in America for
this reason alone. If it was to be successful, each new
product had to differ from the last in terms of look and
feel — even if (especialy if) the function remained pretty
much the same. It had to be new, improved, and
impossible to live without.

Of course they *were*. But by the mid fifties this
tendency had turned into a grand and uncontrollable
obsession with change and “progress”. The world was
inundated with a million and one “new” products that
were essentially variations on the same enduring
theme of universal consumption. Built-in obsolescence
became a hopeful celebration of over-abundence.
Automobile manufacturers even made corporate plans
based on the assumption people would buy new cars
as often as they changed cocktail outfits. In the end
they didn’t, and industry had to invent new ways to sell
their wares.

And sell they did. Thanks to the efforts of designers
like Ben Nash and Herbert Bayer, the packaging
industry became an indispensible part of the American
economy. How else would shoppers know for
example, that Cheer was a washday marvel that
cleans whiter, brighter clothes than the lesser instant
miracles of Joy detergent? If the package hadn’t
actually become the product, they simply wouldn’t.
Advertising spread the word alright, but the battle for
customer loyalty was won and lost on the supermarket
shelves.

In the thirties, designers gave consumers hitherto
unheard of “freedom of choice”. Choosing a new-
model vacuum cleaner, soap, car, refrigerator, soft
drink or whatever, was like a personal expression of
freedom. It was all taken very seriously indeed. Still is
for that matter. US citizens have fought hard to
exercise their inalienable rights as consumers, to
spend as much and as often as possible. That’s OK by
industry. So long as they keep buying, the customer is
always right. Keeping them happy is the tricky bit, and
so the Herculian attempts to satisfy every taste, every
eccentricity, every whim.

Americans were the first to capitalise on the fact that
external appearance was an essential part of hooking
the customer and keeping them satisfied (for a while at
least). Even the simplest utilitarian objects could look
good — especially if they ended up being displayed in
the Design section of New York’s Museum of Modern
Art. But the struggle between “good design” and mere
“style” ultimately turned out to be a not very interesting
struggle over the bounds of good taste.

One of the greatest things about American design is
that there has never been any shortage of products
that ignored the dictates of “good design”. Thank god,
because these products often turned out to be the
“best” anyway. The race to create new styles and
variations on form gave us the most playful and
excessive designs ever created for a mass market. We
need look no further than the towering and completely
decorative tail-fin’s Harley Earl (and everyone else in
Detroit) made famous in the fifites.

In fact, this icon of American car design shows just
how useless the modern myth of functionalism really
is. Nobody ever sold consumer products on their use
value alone. The point of automobile design was not
always about high performance or anything vaguely
empirical like that. While Ford made his fortune
standardising design (any colour so long as it’s black),
Earl introduced a new form of sculpture to the
American masses. What’s more they bought it. His
over-the-top tailfins translated an image of high
performance from post-war fighter jets into a suburban
dream of flying down the highway.

The mass marketing of the fifties has mutated into the
niche marketing of the nineties. Cable television caters
for such an extraordinary range of interests that the
large networks are having trouble surviving. MTV has
earned its place catering to the most cynical anti-
consumerist tendencies of the nation’s youth. Sells
well too. You can even get the haircut if you want.