Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/09/26/industrial-strength-design-pro.html
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Brooks Stevens came in a few times as a guest professor when I was in MIAD’s Industrial Design program. Our professor Tom David was a student of his.
I bounced this article off a relative who’s an expert in pre-WWII automobilia. He immediately locked sights on the claim that Stevens coined the term ‘planned obsolescence’:
That’s bullshit. Alfred Sloan of GM was using that term in the 20s and the concept itself probably pre-dates even Sloan.
He doesn’t think much of Stevens either, both as a matter of taste and influence (for automobiles, anyway).
ETA: Yep, seems that he’s right:
Sloan brought the notion of annual model changes and exciting colors, and making this year’s car faster than last year’s car. Indeed, Sloan is credited with having come up with the concept of planned obsolescence in the middle 1920s. Production had caught up with the demand that was out there. Sloan realized that they had to make people want things that they essentially didn’t need. And that, along with the practice of consumer credit, which allowed people to buy things that they didn’t need, was one of the big steps forward that just turbo-charged the industry for the next 75 years.
—Jamie Kitman, New York Bureau Chief for Automobile [source]
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-raising hand-
“Heard of him!”
Is he hiring?
*VP of Pumpkin Spice Oxycontin, here, or PSOXY.
I can make you money. Can you make me money?
*please see other thread; it’s a joke?
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yep - the full size Jeep - copied by Toyota and Nissan through until the early 2000’s. The Harley Davidson. The white in ‘white goods’.
might have some association with the artistic impressions of the jupiter
vistas created fifty years ago…
…in other news ‘the granite shop’ now sells twenty metric ton blocks
you can sticky together
putting wheels on it is another science
postedit for mobiles…
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