Industrial Design

Logos started this theme on design and another aspect within Graphic Design is Industrial Design for which Wikipedia offers an excellent, simple definition:

Industrial Designers are a cross between an engineer and an artist. They study both function and form, and the connection between product and the user.

Due to my years of teaching Graphics, and having studied Fine Art for three years after finishing Year 12, I do appreciate good design which is functional. Furniture is a very personal choice when it comes to design and its form can either be masculine or more feminine, or in my case, ideally a happy medium in between. I will use the new dining table we purchased in 2008 as a good example of what I mean.

When we were looking for a new dining suite, many we looked at were heavy and solid with hard straight edges and to my taste,  too masculine. Or they were at the opposite extreme where they were too light with thin legs which will not wear well,  particularly on chairs which are constantly used and moved around. To complicate matters, we like something which is a little unusual so the criteria was even more difficult to fulfil. And in my experience, expensive does not always guarantee good design.

I was actually very surprised how little time it took to find our “ideal” dining suite. It had the right balance of straight edges and curves giving it a feminine touch and heavy enough to be solid without being overly masculine. Best of all, it is also unusual in that the table top is not all wood and has a pattern of eight squares of slate which gives it a very earthy, rustic feel with classic clean lines.

My father is a carpenter and has made some beautiful pieces of furniture and there are three exquisite stone feature walls inside the house my father built, in which my parents still live 47 years later. Having grown up with a craftsman father, my appreciation of natural materials is not surprising. In fact, this table would be just the sort of thing my father would have made himself had he seen the design at a younger age.

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