DES 40B Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Wirephoto, Lateral Thinking, Fordism
Lecture 12: 5/15/18
What did Mid-Century Modernists believe?
• Charles and Ray Eames: House of Cards: 1952
o Based on how the Eames design around systems, info, interaction and play
o Deck of 20 cards and came in different sizes
o Interlock in different ways
▪ Slits along the edges so that they can interlock in different ways
o “Fail often fail early” - Silicon Valley
o Encourages one to take a risk
▪ Manufacture it to knowledge
▪ Encourages to think and use creativity
o 1) Demonstrates a Modular Construction System
▪ Rigid system permitting choice and change
▪ Structure is indeterminate
▪ Works through modules: set of independent units used to construct a
more complex structure
• Created flat pack designs
• Modular idea throughout all designs
o Eames designed along with system of stacking and interchangeability
o 2) Demonstrates a System of Random Associations
▪ Connections between pictures are random
• Pushes consumer to create relationships between cards
▪ Depends on input of consumer/player
▪ Machine for collage: art of combination
o Today, “cards” are mixed using network computer systems (ex: websites,
instagram, etc.)
▪ Meanings are synthetic, assembled, momentary
o Help people see beauty in the forgotten, unfamiliar and everyday, and make new
collages
• Why the need to “demo” a system of creativity?
o Eameses created toys and exhibits for IBM
▪ IBM was emerging as world’s foremost computer corporation
▪ To make technical systems seem friendly
▪ Train people for knowledge work
▪ To promote globalization
o 1) Making Technical Systems seem Friendly
▪ Eameses created new Machine Age optimism about possibilities of tech
systems after WW2 and Cold War
• Systems were of rising importance following WW2
o Coordinated digital computers, radar subsystem, telephone
networks, aircraft, and missiles
▪ Eames popularized the science and math behind the Second Machine
Age in their projects
• Promoted with IBM that systems are extensions of humans w/
which we interact
o 2) Training People for Knowledge Work
▪ Eameses helped “design” post-war Americans as playful, inquisitive, and
problem-solving
• Rather than dependents upon precedent, habit, and tradition
▪ Converting the look of design and tech as fun
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