"Design is dead. . ."  

.
Totally in the wrong! 🙂 I'm a terrible typer and wouldn't have made the same mistake writing, I've allways wanted to point out to LRF that he gets 'to' and 'too' confused but he's dyslexic!
Stark is taking a bit of a battering here, mostly well deserved, Koen seems to have a particular distaste for the guy but he has a disease which has infected so many designers, there are many more that need a good dressing down.
I think young designers will have real trouble trying to work from prinicples when all they are interested in doing is making striking looking mobile phone casings and stick blenders in 3d software.

I enjoy your kvetching, SDR
My favorite was when you responded to someone who wrote, "wholly mackerel!", concurring with "completely mackerel".

.
furthermore 🙂 I'm rabbiting on like DC... play with materials and form for the sake of it can be a good way to come to a solution but it only gets you half way there,
Force editing a piece into ethical shape by abandoning it, altering a profile to conserve material, choosing the right material and supplier, strength testing etc etc is where the actual work happens and is really evident in the great peices we all know about, but Starcks and others work...its like a teenager being being born fully formed but prematurely, there just wasn't enough gestation.
The market for goods is so competitive that a designer who wants commercial success doesn't have the luxury of contemplating a design, walking away and coming back six months later becuase the fashionable work has to get into the shops asap, it was mentioned to me a while ago that the goal should be to get a product from concept to the high street in 6 weeks!

Hi Heath
I do not have a particular distaste for P.S. He is probably quite a nice person with a good sense of humour and most probably inclined to like to good things in life. His preferences in food are less known but he has often advocated, as many good French husbands do, the benefits of an active love life and even suggesting that he was quite good at it to, so?
What worries me more is that in spite of a rather mediocre production, the people surrounding him have been such virtuosi in promoting his talent that it became the dominant model for numerous young designers. It worries me because from my vintage point (older person involved in design and education in design) I start to see too many victims. Young often talented designers that have such high hopes that the have put themselves in unbearable financial situations just because they think there ?break through? is just around the corner. They have dozens and dozens of magazine clippings of the half dozen products they invested money in , but are not capable to sell because of the huge gap there exists between public exposure and sales.
Of course I should turn my attention or anger to the media, who without any discrimination or selection publishes whatever will attract the attention of the potential reader and in doing so gives the impression that these products actually exist and/or are successful.
I also dislike the attitude of identifying so much with a particular activity, in this case design, that you can think that your vision is the only valid one, and so if you decide that your contribution to design has been superficial or even ?un-necessary? and that you are ?ashamed ?of it, that you take the whole activity with you and make ?design a dreadful form of expression?
Other than that I like him a lot!

My apologies Koen, it was the...
My apologies Koen, it was the impression I got from your earlier post.
I agree totally with you on the young designer syndrome, the impression is given that they are living a high life from the clippings but its all very false.
I think there is a disconnect between between what the younger designer (and a lot of older ones) wants to produce and what the average client would actually want to purchase rather than just admire, the finacial burden of producing these spectacular pieces is crippling and is something I've only recently come to terms with, anyone who wants to make products would be better off at first buying a small selection of woodworking equipment (router table an absolute must) and start to learn some wood working skills, excellent work can be produced with limited means and timber really is still the cheapest resource you can get your hands on.
Leave the 5 axis cnc and and fibreglass to the big boys, you can go broke making one chair that no one wants.
A product like this uses a spectacularly modest amount of material, c.$25.00 in very good timber, the value comes in the skill which is the best asset a person can have, throwing thousands at a rotomoulder is crazy, if it goes wrong or won't sell, well you're up shit creek! If the timber product goes wrong, well you've lost $25.00 and can make it into firewood.
Anyway rabbiting on again and speaking of woodwork I have a lot to go make!
PS apologies to M anderson I think I've hotlinked to is site.

Uh,...
Design is dead.
Film noir is dead.
Doris Day movies are dead.
God is dead.
Atheism is dead.
Existentialism is dead.
Logical positivism is dead.
Liberalism is dead.
Conservatism is dead.
Communism is dead.
Fascism is dead.
Representative government is dead.
The V-8 is dead.
The super computer is dead.
Baseball is dead.
James Dean is dead.
John Lennon is dead.
Kirk Cobain is dead.
Folk music is dead.
Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper are dead.
The music is dead.
Rock and roll is dead.
Sex godesses are dead.
Rap is dead.
Hip Hop is dead.
Machine music is dead.
The Greatful Dead are dead.
Talking Heads are dead.
The king is dead.
Sculpture is dead.
Painting is dead.
Abstract expressionism is dead.
The golden age of television is dead.
The golden age of FM is dead.
Pop art is dead.
Op Art is dead.
Andy Warhola is dead.
Phillip Johnson is dead.
Frank Lloyd Wright is dead.
Mid-Century modern is dead.
These pathetic little attempts at punctuating the end of trends are just frightened human cries for some order in the Tempest. Forget them.
I've got a secret...
It never ends.

...for a moment...
we thought dcwilson was dead..
but he is alive and well!

In The End
We're All Dead!

I believe it was economist John Maynard Keynes who said...
In the long term, we are all dead.
He said this in response to persons saying that in the long term the Great Depression would eventually sort itself out.

NOOOO!!!
Doris Day movies AREN'T dead!!

This design (see link) is an...
This design (see link) is an absolutely perfect example of rational responsible design being disregarded for the sake of ego, unfortuantely its by one of DAs featured designers, very regretable.
If you had any respect for the design why would you execute it in such a totally inapropriate material? And the waste!
I have printed a picture of it off to remind myself of what to avoid ever doing.
If this is the now then design really is sick.
PS I had a look at the chaps website, he has a good eye and has done much much better work than this, but its a sculpture looking to make a buck.
http://www.designaddict.com/design_index/index.cfm/fuseaction/PRODUCER_s...

But
Manifesto is not dead!

Viva Manifesto...
For this design is shit.
Man, I don't think I've ever written that before about a designer's work listed on DA. It saddens me to have write it.
My first MO in these cases is to say nothing about the truly bad...but what was someone thinking here?
My second MO, when the truly bad sticks with me for more than a few minutes, is to try to see what might be redemptive about it. Sometimes the new is shocking.
I looked. I thought. I found nothing.
Taking two flat sheets of pink plastic, or whatever, and cutting holes in them with an exacto knife, then intersecting them, then calling them a motive coat rack seems the work of a really bad, first year design student.
Might it be a hacker's joke on the DA website?