Objectified

Some of us are all told when we are young to not be judgmental. We should be polite and nice, and open to all things. Many of us assume we have grown up like this and will not judge. Despite our efforts to fight this, being judgmental is innate. This is a fact pointed out in the documentary Objectified by Gary Hustwit. He describes how every object the human eye sees, we are already judging it by its appearance, its type, its texture. When we go shopping, we are guided to what appeals to us most and this is determined by several judgment calls. As designers, when we see objects, our job is to find a way to improve things. We are to look at the problems and understand why or why not something works. As quoted from the documentary, “ Every Object tells a story,” and is designed to live out that story. A good design should be aesthetically pleasing, long-lived, consistent in detail, be useful, use as little design as possible, and the list goes on. There are no standards to what making a good design entails. There are different ways to approach design and different ways to explore ideas. In the film, Hustwit uses the example of how car designers start out from carving out from clay, not much different than a process Michelangelo would do. This shows how design comes from the mind, not from what you have. It is about what you can make and how. Objectified helps explain how design plays a role in our everyday life, and how things can be improved with a little creativity and thinking.