FEATURE
For a few decades before the millennium, designs that took on unusual forms were all the rage. Today, those cutting edge designs are fading. What happened?
Written by Poornima Apte
A RECENT EXHIBIT AT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL revealed a compelling picture. Set in the 1950s, it featured a young Meroë Morse, the legend who powered significant advancements in instant photography, posing with an early prototype of the Polaroid camera. The exhibit was not just an ode to Morse, who worked at Polaroid, but a nod to “good” industrial design.
In what might have been a case of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, I started seeing Polaroid cameras everywhere. At a party I hosted recently, my friend’s daughter whipped hers out to take a picture. The amount of enthusiasm that grainy photograph generated was amusing.
But it’s not surprising, said Mark Rolston, founder of industrial design firm, argodesign. “The Polaroid brings the romance back. At a time when everything is digital, it gives you something tangible to hold and play with,” he added.
Does the story of Polaroid’s resurgence mirror a broader narrative that today’s industrial design has taken a turn for the bland and that consumers must reach back in time to “bring the romance back”?
It’s a complicated answer.
ROOTS IN BAUHAUS
Professor Leslie Fontana, chair of the Department of Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design, does see a movement toward the bland. “I feel like we got lost somewhere along the way,” she said.
To understand why, we have to go back in time to before the Industrial Revolution, when products were handmade. “Early designs were more ornamented rather than strictly engineered for a purpose and because the means of production was through handcrafting. It all worked together,” said Gavin Ivester, head of design for Collaboration Devices at Cisco and former head of design at Danish electronics company, Bang and Olufsen, known for its iconic designs. Ivester was a member of Apple’s design team for 11 years and he worked on the very first Apple laptop and the Newton, the company’s first personal digital assistant (PDA).
It was the Bauhaus movement (1919–1933) that marked a significant shift in industrial design, moving the focus away from a product-centric approach to a process-centric one. “Bauhaus said industrial design means design for manufacturing, so we should begin with the processes we have and create designs to use those processes efficiently,” Ivester said.
Polaroid camera models and films as showcased in the Polaroid Corporation Annual Report in 1958. Photo: Polaroid Corporation Administrative Records, b. I.464, f. 22. Baker Library, Harvard Business School
Edwin Land with the Polaroid Land Camera in 1947. Photo: Polaroid Corporation Records, Photograph & Visual Materials Collection, b. X.650, f. 1. Baker Library, Harvard Business School
The Bauhaus philosophy slowly evolved to minimalist straight lines and an undecorated aesthetic—the kind made popular by legendary designer Dieter Rams. Apple’s sleek, rounded curves look borrows from these design principles.
“The success of minimalist industrial design is its ability to engage and make actions as simple as possible to execute. By that measure, Apple has succeeded enormously,” said Ravi Sawhney, pioneer of the psycho-esthetics approach to industrial design. Founder of RKS Designs, Sawhney has been steeped in the field for more than 50 years. The reason why many might consider today’s industrial design bland is not because of the minimalist look but because of the ubiquity of Apple-like products.
“When so many products mimic the Apple aesthetic, it definitely reaches the point of boredom,” Sawhney said.
“Early designs were more ornamented rather than strictly engineered for a purpose and because the means of production was through handcrafting, it all worked together.”
—Gavin Ivestor, head of Design for Collaboration Devices at Cisco
THE DOLLAR IMPACT
Cost and bottom-line considerations have also understandably played a role in shaping industrial design’s evolution. Minimalism helps lower manufacturing costs in simplifying design for the user and the molding process. “It certainly makes parts cheaper when you can pull things directly out of a mold instead of having a multitude of actions,” said freelance industrial designer Jennifer Linnane.
“When people say industrial design is boring, they might be reflecting on the budget more than the design problem,” Rolston agreed.
Injection mold plastic manufacturing is all well and good for costs, but how many spatulas does society really need, Fontana asked. “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should,” she said. Fontana also blames online shopping for devaluing quality industrial design.
“When there were three players in a market, you could compare the three different design philosophies and say you were a Black and Decker person, but now company names are unrecognizable—you’re not even sure about the integrity of the designs,” she said.
Industrial designers can build rapid prototypes and iterate and try new things with software, but Fontana bemoans the industry’s cost-cutting move away from creating physical prototypes before manufacturing products. “I can’t believe that we talked designers out of the very important prototyping stage, that somehow we can go from a three-dimensional CAD drawing we can spin on a screen right into production without any kind of physical object being created,” Fontana said.
The Apptronik humanoid robot has to look friendly, not scary, one of its many design remits. Photo: Mark Rolston for Apptronik
The migration to digital has also changed the process of industrial design, Linnane argued. It used to be that designers would visit stores and review print magazines for inspiration. They were able to freely and directly select what inspired them without external influences. With products being showcased online, the inspiration platforms have gone digital as well. “For example, when you go to Pinterest for inspiration, the algorithms filter what you search, and show the things that have been looked at the most so that too leads to sameness,” Linnane said.
Matthew Moseman, president of Develop LLC, an automation systems integrator, said stronger collaboration between manufacturing and industrial design teams can lead to better outcomes. “By working alongside those facing the manufacturing challenges, designers can better understand how their decisions drive costs and customer value, as well as the organization’s profit,” he said.
“I can’t believe that we talked designers out of the very important prototyping stage, that somehow we can go from a three-dimensional CAD drawing we can spin on a screen right into production without any kind of physical object being created.”
—Leslie Fontana, professor and chair of the Department of Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design
CULTURE’S INFLUENCE
Manufacturing efficiency has led to products that can be designed and mass-produced faster. Companies can also make more, so they and their products must constantly find new markets.
As a result, globalization has been another major shaper of industrialization, Ivester said. Because brands and audiences became global, culture got thrown into the design mix. “When a lot of products are designed globally, cultural filters are different for a single product, in which case you might start to migrate away from a very artistic expression that works in one locale and for one culture to something that’s more universal,” Ivester said. Industrial design dilutes in such a migration.
Fontana pointed out that the concept of universal design, which once was a buzzword in the field, is now a lovely but impractical idea. “When we tried to design for everyone to make things more universal, we washed away the features that made products really specific and usable for particular groups of people,” Fontana said.
And while ease of manufacturing and of assembly are valid concerns, they are often sacrificed at the altar of ease of use, Fontana said. She pointed to the example of a highchair she helped redesign—it wasn’t made for a parent who struggles with maneuvering the various components of the seat while holding a squirming child.
“Yes, each project has frameworks and we have to make products that look and feel intuitive, but good frameworks allow for interpretation, and at times, can be stretched a little bit.”
Jennifer Linnane, freelance industrial designer
A SOFTWARE DRIVEN WORLD
When software first started making its way into devices, there was still room to play with industrial design, partly because there was a proliferation of emerging electronic accessories, such as pocket music players, that could be designed.
But that has changed. “Industrial design might appear boring right now because so much of what the average user needs to get done happens in a software world,” Rolston said.
Early software versions were pretty basic and all they needed was a simple black-and-white screen. “All of the storytelling in that case was left to industrial design,” Rolston said. Over the years, software has taken center stage.
“Today’s software is so good that it drives the story. In cellphones for example, the screen is where all the life is,” Rolston continued. “Industrial design really needs to get out of the way—it’s become a mechanical and electrical challenge to package the phone as simply as possible so it can be as much of a screen as possible.”
Linnane agreed. Even digital screens have evolved from basic black-and-white displays to touchscreens, she pointed out. Technologies like virtual reality have added to the drama and evolution of design to shift the focus onto the software with the product casing playing second fiddle.
There’s a very narrow band of acceptable shapes when designing a robot, said Mark Rolston, founder of industrial design firm, argodesign. Photo: Mark Rolston for Apptronik
NOT SO FAST
While many factors have lined up to deliver a somewhat repetitive look in contemporary industrial design, there’s still a lot of excitement, Ivester said. You just need to know where to look—and that’s to the East.
There has been a design revolution coming out of South Korea and China, especially in automotive design, Ivester argued. Also, take the example of liquid glass that Apple released in 2025, which adds fluidity and depth to the user interface. “It’s interesting that it has been controversial, which is also evidence that design is not boring,” Ivester said.
Industrial design is finding new avenues for creative expression. For example, argodesign has been working on humanoid robots from Apptronik with a mission to make the robot as visually attractive and stylish as possible. And since the robot is intentionally humanoid, it needed to look friendly and not scary as well.
WHAT DOES HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN LOOK LIKE?
Keeping cultural differences in mind for industrial design is key because good design has roots in empathy, said veteran industrial designer Ravi Sawhney.
Sawhney’s company, RKS Designs, reimagined the concept of a basic can opener to create the Zyliss, a kitchen utility that has garnered 40,000 5-star reviews on Amazon. Instead of fumbling with the handle and figuring out the right kind of pressure to exert, the redesigned Xylis locks the handles in place once the can is punctured. Using similar principles, Sawhney and team redesigned a diabetic insulin pump to look like a pager so there would be less stigma about giving oneself an insulin shot.
Then there was the inexpensive solution to watching a soccer game. When Sawhney and his team were designing for Samsung in the Middle East and North Africa, they found consumers shared a few common priorities: education, religion, and peace. Prayers were important and so was soccer. Because many consumers couldn’t afford DVRs, Sawhney’s company designed an inexpensive solution: They changed the software on existing televisions to use a flash card to record commentary and take pictures of a soccer game to create a continuous video.
The Zyliss is a reboot on the can-opener keeping a human-centric approach to design. Photo: RKS Designs
“It’s a problem that feels like science fiction but is very much rooted in industrial design,” Rolston said. Design has to figure out how to wrap the robot mechanisms successfully in the right housing. “The robot head shape matters too because if you end up with a simian shape it works against the brand. There’s a very narrow band of acceptable shapes when designing a robot,” he added.
Rolston expects industrial design to fulfill a renewed appetite for romance in the everyday products we interact with and use. “We get more romantic about a function when you have solved its fundamental provision. It’s like an Italian or an Indian meal—it’s not just about putting food on a plate, it’s about the romance of cooking a delightful meal. The same has been happening to electronics like toasters. Eating bread might cost at most a couple of dollars, but we’ll spend $100 on a decorative toaster because it’s kind of a cultural cue,” Rolston said.
A designer friend of his, Jared Ficklin, called such an embrace of unique one-of-a-kind things as “Etsification”—a play, of course, on the handmade goods found on Etsy. “When we get so good at making products, we immediately start turning to a singular version of things, to ‘Etsify’ your world is the next step,” Rolston added.
Also expect additive manufacturing to add some excitement. “When your production run is a single product, even if you’re manufacturing in large numbers, in theory, with additive manufacturing, you could have an element that’s different and unique with every single product,” Ivester said. “I would argue that could be an antidote for boredom.”
Meroë Morse with a Polaroid Land Camera outside the Polaroid building in a test photograph taken during the 1950s. Photo: Polaroid Corporation Records, Photograph & Visual Materials Collection, b. X.428, s. 586. Baker Library, Harvard Business School
Will AI change the field for the better? “AI can definitely act as a leveraging tool but only if you have the foundational knowledge to differentiate between what’s viable and exciting and what’s not,” Fontana said. She pointed to designers like James Dyson, who understood and stretched basic concepts to create exciting products. “He took this simple idea of a spinning ball and applied it to so many products, whether that was a vacuum cleaner or hair dryer. He truly had a deep understanding of the concepts,” she said.
Despite some blandness in today’s industrial design, Fontana is excited about the future. “I wouldn’t be a teacher if I weren’t an optimist,” she said.
Indeed, professionals say there’s a lot to look forward to in industrial design. “Yes, each project has frameworks and we have to make products that look and feel intuitive, but good frameworks allow for interpretation, and at times, can be stretched a little bit,” Linnane said.
Poornima Apte is a technology writer based in Walpole, Mass.
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