From the course: Objectified

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Form and function

Form and function

From the course: Objectified

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Form and function

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- We now have a new generation of products. Where the form bears absolutely no relation to the function. I mean look at something like an iPhone and think of all the things it does. In the olden days of, sort of, what are called analog products. In other words, they're not digital they're not electronic. Something like, say, a chair or a spoon. Form followed function tend to work. So, if say, you imagine being a martian and you just land on planet Earth and you've never seen a spoon or a chair before. You can guess roughly what you're supposed to do with them, sit on or feed yourself with them, by the shape of the object, by the way it looks. Now all that has been annihilated by the microchip. So, design is moving from this culture of the tangible and the material to an increasingly intangible and immaterial culture but that poses an enormous number of tensions and conflicts within design. - I think there are really three phases of modern design. One of those phases, or approaches if…

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