Customer Reviews

Genius of Design

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As design puts FUN in products--this DVD puts FUN in an educational documentary.
Designers of 'stuff' touch our lives every second. A fascinating detailed look at what is always right before our lives causing our decisions. It incorporates product personalities, environment, culture, history, technology, and economics of design. Predominantly 20th century coverage. A different way to see the 20th Century Industrial Revolution.

2 discs, 5 episodes (each about 48 min.) WITH SUBTITLES. Bonus: informative viewer's guide; 10 designer text bios on DVDs.

Episode details:
1 GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE- Centuries of design history includes Wedgwood pottery; Abraham Darby iron bridges & cook pots; Wm. Morris (arts & crafts) Victorian hand-made textile patters; & Ford Model T. the Industrial Revolution was designing mass production.

2 DESIGNS FOR LIVING- Early 20th Century design tackles the gap between stuff & us. Bauhaus (German) center for new design--art in furniture. Products design's artistic genesis. Art Nouveau--steel tubing--Double House--secondhand became antique--Anglepoise Lamp--Commerce design--Airstream--and more covered.

3 BLUEPRINTS FOR WAR- WWII urgent design period shapes war products & the world. Death by design. The battle for new weapon ingenuity. Inspired corporate identity design. VW Beetle, its success & its Nazi Hitler dark side. Sten Gun, Mosquito Plane (wood-stealth), Nazi Tiger Tank vs. Russian T-34 tank, Liberty Ships covered. Eames chair is adapted war design.

4 BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY- Chemistry creates inventive design-like Tupperware. Post-WWII product design, like minimalism (simplicity) guided design. Road signs to the Polyprop chair. Plastic's coming-of-age. High Design with a capital D preceded miniaturization and mobility. Then plastic's NON-biodegradable deflation. Form follows function.

5 OBJECTS OF DESIRE- Emotion is a primary function of design. Designing for mass production means making items desirable, luxurious, designedly unique. Conspicuous consumption designer job is to offer variety & abundance. Fashion-driven consumerism. Designing to sell through 'want'; not need. The 1963 'mouse', desktop, and i-pod came from user-centered design.

Educational. Fun. A layman's language entertaining BBC documentary.

I came across this series on the infotainment system while flying between the U.S. and Hong Kong. Being an engineer with past experience designing consumer products I found the series to be a brilliant historical account of industrial design post WWII. I purchased a copy for a former colleague and he subsequently purchased 4 copies to distribute throughout his company as a teaching tool for marketing-types and others who are impacted by industrial design decisions.

If you're someone who has a sense of curiosity about the products that surround us and the formative personalities that shape(d) so many things we buy today (iPods, Walkmen, stacking chairs) then this series is guaranteed to be an interesting watch.

Congrats to the BBC for yet another outstanding series.

this is by far the most comprehensive and unbiased history of the modern design ever. I loved the segment about design and war and also the considerations about the future of industrial design x environment

I watched this series on the Smithsonian Channel. It was awesome. I was surprised how much I learned about design. I'm a software developer and I was interested in the way design can really make a difference in the feelings people have about objects. The series draws many parallels between industrial design and software design.

Now I have it on DVD so I can get inspiration anytime!