Objectified

Just watched Objectified again. It's by Gary Hustwit, who also Directed Helvetica. This is the second in his design trilogy. I just watched the final installment, Urbanized, a little while ago. All good films in their own right.

Objectified doesn't glamorize or try to make industrial design sexy. It's a somewhat dry documentary. Maybe "subtle" is a better word than "dry." I don't know. I dig it. It's unvarnished and pretty mellow. We see interviews with a variety of designers who have some pretty interesting and relatively deep insights into design. And we see interviews with a couple lunatics. The art fags you just couldn't see eye-to-eye with in art school. SOME of them end up getting paid well for being flighty art fags. Whatever. The rest of the cast have their heads pretty well screwed on to their bodies.

Surprisingly, Karim Rashid has some really valuable insights. I say "surprisingly" because the man wears white nailpolish and lots of pink accessories. The long-hair dude with the nice couch in the background is my other favorite interviewee.

The ideas are translatable to other areas of design. Obviously, as an Art Director, I could relate to their processes even though we work in different specialized fields.

If you've ever wondered about industrial design process then watch this flick. And even if you don't care about how they design handles for potato-peelers...watch this flick.