Design with no Soul: To market, to market.

Dehumanization was valued in Modernism, and continues to underpin design today.

In the modernist era, the move away from the decorative and personal toward a widely appealing style
(Raizman 167) meant that items were designed in uncluttered functionality, with clean necessary lines, and were homogenously produced by precise industrial machines: pumping out generically-styled items for the masses: in essence, epitomizing all the things we as complicated, imperfect human beings are not.

We don't align in geometric rows, nor are any two of us the same. Our pen to paper is not flawless.
Some of us are downright cluttered: we relate to the personal in design.

Modernism extracted that connective human component in favor of homogeny, and it continues to thrive: objects are designed almost solely for mass manufacture - if an object is too ‘decorated’ or geared toward one, it will not span utopia successfully. The iPhone, for example, is a widespread plain silver sleeve. We all carry the same rectangular laptop. We all own a pair of jeans. Our homes come as blank canvases that we customize.

Things are so dehumanized now that if you want to make one of these generically designed items your own, you must purchase another mass-produced item made to ‘customize’ that first generic item: which a few thousand other people also own. The success of objects meant purely for the customization of other objects alone is enough to cement that this simple dehumanization of objects not only carried forward from modernism, but that it spurned a perpetual cycle of generic consumerism.

Thankfully, the questioning of whether designers are meant to conform to such impersonal standards also underpins design today, as it did in the Modernist era. 

Henry Van de Velde - in antitheses of the Werkbund - likened the imposition of design standardization to castration of the artist’s gifts of invention (Conrads 30) in 1914, and states that the artist ‘‘Of his own free will he will never subordinate himself to a discipline that imposes upon him a type’’ (Conrads 31), and that what one has found to be a standard shouldn’t be imposed on others (Conrads 31).

And, ironically, the De Stijl design group - which began in the spirit of unified modernist collaboration (Raizman 170) seems to have been driven apart when founder Van Doesburg leaned toward individually-geared design as valued over the collective (Raizman 172): disbanding because ‘‘despite shared principles, individualistic preferences persisted’’ (Raizman 171).

Our means of production carry on this dehumanization, so is the designer's natural inclination against it the only thing that prevents design from becoming impersonal, aesthetically - today as it did then?

‘‘Too perfectly made is a sign of enslavement and is dehumanizing’’ (Fisher).

Photo Sources: 1/2/3/4/5/6/7.

Works Cited: 

Conrads, Ulrich. ‘’1914 Muthesius/Van de Velde: Werkbund Theses and Antitheses.’’ Programs and manifestoes on 20^th-century architecture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1975. Ed. Ulrich Conrads. 28-31. <http://books.google.ca/books?id=lXSg6NMDAN0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false>

Fisher, Maxe. Class Notes (John Ruskin Quote). DHIS 201: Design Culture II. Emily Carr University Vancouver. Sept. 18, 2012.

Raizman, David. ‘’The ‘First Machine Age’ in Europe. Part III: After World War (1918-44): Art, Industry, and Utopias.’’ History of Modern Design: Graphics and Products Since the Industrial Revolution. King Publishing, 2003. Ch 9, 167-191. <http://books.google.ca/books?id=J_NcHIW-zt8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false>