DES 40B Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Jewry Wall, Great Depression, Consumerism
LECTURE 6: 4/19/18
• Design as “drawing together” rather than drawing
o Design as organizational rather than form
o Detail and big picture around a core product
• Part 1: What’s to like about Capitalism/Fordism?
o Jobs
▪ Opportunities and entrepreneurship
o Creates a standard of living
▪ Social mobility
▪ Improves quality of life
▪ Provides more leisure time
▪ Efficiency
o Consumption
• Designers remain central to capitalism and often try to find alternatives
• The Consumer Experience
o “Hackable”
▪ Entire Model Ts were hacked apart by industrial owners
• Reconfigured into custom machinery
▪ Other inventions can be made through hacking
• Growth of industry around industry
o An “open system”
• Helps with economic growth
o Physical and Social Mobility
▪ Enabled mobility away from cities
▪ Farmer was target client, bc agriculture was US’ main occupation
▪ Model T allowed great wheel movement to cope with dirt roads of the time
▪ The T and Middle Class
• First affordable automobile
• Opened travel to middle class Americans
• Diverse Market: doctors, salesmen, farmers
• Henry Ford became loved by his customers
▪ Not only just physical mobility, but social mobility
• The Worker Experience
o High Wages (and the costs of that)
▪ By doubling wage, workers can become consumers as well as workers
▪ Doubles wage to get the best workers $2.35 -> $5
• Reduced turnover
▪ US economy transitioned from production-driven to consumer-driven
▪ Helped expand the middle class
• Hype: Fordism as the main event of the “Machine Age”
o Henry Ford shows that Fordism is meant to further precision and quality
▪ Portrays the product in different condition and environments
▪ Shows the benefit of Fordism: more jobs, etc.
o Fordism begins with design and engineering
▪ Then becomes mode of manufacturing, and ultimately, a culture
Lecture 7: 4/24/18
• River Rouge: Diego Rivera, Detroit Industry
o Depiction of a Machine Age “new world”
o Focused on the people, especially labor
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