Industrial Design

When I was first heard of this 1,000 word essay assignment, I was not sure where on earth to start. Then, I started thinking “what are the products that I use without really thinking about their purpose of existence?”

There are many products around that make me wonder, “I wonder who first came up with this idea”.

Of course, there are the known inventions like telephones and light bulbs but my recent interest – cosmetics, is one of the many that I wonder every day. I wonder, for example, who came up with the idea of a lipstick.

Cosmetics help the user to look and feel more beautiful by solving complexion problems, disguising impurities or enhancing features. Nowadays, we are flooded with new products launched on the shelves attracting prospective customers. There are television commercials, magazine advertisements and internet advertisements promoting endless number of products that eventually make one look more beautiful than before they put on the product.

Desire to look more beautiful, is one of the most instinctive nature that all living plants, flowers, insects, animals and humans have in common. Flowers bloom in bright colours and animals tend their fur to look shinier. Cleopatra, one of the classic beauties from history, is known for using various home-made remedies to make her skin feel softer and enhance her good features. Presently, many people, especially women, spend minutes to hours making themselves more beautiful with a minimum of one product (lotion?) to a good dozen of them (toner, moisturizer, daily cream, eye cream, SPF cream, primer, foundation, powder, blush, eye shadow, eye liner, mascara, lipstick, lip gloss). Often in situations, women are expected to present themselves with certain amount of make up to show professionalism or diligence.

Here is the dilemma: the most-talked-about in design world, “form and functionalism”

“Beautify-ing” or “Grooming” is something that is hard to discuss about “form and functionalism” conversation because functionalism is something that is simple and achieves simplicity from the natural and un-ornamented form. Design can be broadly defined as that it solves problems while pursuing aesthetics.

However, in the cosmetics world, which pursues the one same goal of solving problems while pursuing aesthetics, the more complicated the user is with the lines of products, the more likely to be more beautiful in form. Of course, we cannot overly generalize everything about cosmetics, but in most cases it is an agreeable statement.

Like John Maeda says, we won’t be able to appreciate simplicity without experiencing complexity. Right now, many people are taking the complex approach of presenting ourselves more beautifully. Society expects us to be ornately presented in order to gain respect and attention and that has become the social norm. Women spend a long time trying on different shades of eye shadows and lipsticks and men also spend some time in front of the mirror, fixing their hair or beard. We all spend more money than what we essentially need to on purchasing the newer and better product that may not even guarantee more beauty that is equivalent to the sum of spending.

Followed by the design movement of functionalism, I hope, we soon start realizing the newer and better approach of maintaining beauty. Our natural skin tones, size of eyes and colour of lips are specifically and uniquely designed for each individual. The geometry, proportion and scale of each individual are designed in harmony of customized biological process.

I think it is worth trying functionalism and appreciating our natural assets without ornamentation. Maybe then, we might be able to pay more attention to observing how they behave, speak and think instead of looking at them.

However, I am aware that decorating ourselves is probably one of the last things that we will take functionalism approach because we love beautiful things, we love making us look more beautiful and we love complicating ourselves.

For me, Industrial Design is understanding human behaviours like this in a formal way that I can apply this knowledge into my future design solutions. For example, I recently purchased a make-up kit named “Primpcess”. It contains colours of eyeshadow, a mascara and a concealer, which can easily be found elsewhere. However, because its name is “Primpcess” and my desire to look more beautiful communicated with the brand, I purchased the product.

Hopefully, in my design career, I will be designing products that communicate with and satisfy our basic, yet sophisticated desires and needs.

By the way, utilizing the convenience of the Internet, I found out some of the brief history of a lipstick.

“Lipstick is known to have been used around 5000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, when semi-precious jewels were crushed and applied to the lips and occasionally around the eyes. Women in the ancient Indus Valley Civilization applied lipstick to their lips for face decoration. Ancient Egyptians extracted purplish-red dye from fucus-algin, 0.01% iodine, and some bromine mannite, which resulted in serious illness. Cleopatra had her lipstick made from crushed carmine beetles, which gave a deep red pigment, and ants for a base. Lipsticks with shimmering effects were initially made using a substance found in fish scales called pearlescence."(Wikipedia)