Victor Papanek: designer for the real world

Design for the Real World:

by Victor Papanek. Paladin. Sweet & Maxwells. $2.75. Reviewed by Doug Wilson.

Someone I know came back from the USA recently with a battery powered card-shuffler. It's time all this bullshit was stopped. But don't take my word for it - listen to Victor Papanek. Everything you use or buy was designed. Papanek is a UNESCO international design expert and Dean of the School of Design at the California Institute of the Arts. As he puts it "there are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them. And possibly only one profession is phonier. Advertising...." If you're so low that only advertising is worse then you're pretty bad.

The central thesis of his book is this. Designers, who are employed by the manufacturing complex of the western world, are preoccupied with the design and production of trivial bullshit which can be sold and which will wear out. They should, he says, be designing things which people need and which will work.

He lists various kinds of people for whom design docs nothing — the crippled, the aged, the mentally and educationally sub-normal, the poor, the third world. But he doesn't just talk — he's actually done something. Contrast some of these useful items, with whose design he has been associated, with the other examples he mentions.

1)	A hand-cranked (10 minutes per day) refrigerator which can be produced for a total cost of $6. This is useful in tropical and underdeveloped nations where one of the major problems is not that food cannot be produced, but that it cannot be kept. Contrast — a battery powered bicycle for adults, Abercombie and Fitch, winner of the "Upper Westchester Status Object" award — price $650.
2)	A single channel high definition (fine line quality is essential for educational TV) TV set, specifically designed for long life in tropical climates, costing $9 total to produce. Contrast "a highly sophisticated, market competitive TV set" (36 channels and the works) selling for $119.95 in the US costing the Japanese manufacturer a total of $18 to produce.
3)	"A radio receiver designed for the third world. It is made of a used juice can, and uses paraffin wax and a wick as a power source. The rising heat is converted into enough energy to power the non-selective receiver. Once the wax us gone, it can be replaced by more wax, paper, dried cow dung or anything else that will burn. Manufacturing costs on a cottage basis, nine cents. Contrast. A Queen Anne styled footrest, with internal heater — only $16.95 and 50 cents for delivery.
4)	Most bicycles have a life use of 75 years in the third world. Two students at Purdue University designed an improved carrier which flips down, allowing the bicycle to be used as a power source. The construction of the belt drive operation is within the scope of the most modest village technology. It can be used to generate electricity, running a lathe, digging wells, pumping and so on. All this without destroying the primary function of providing transportation. Contrast, mail order, instantly inflatable woman.

"Gretchen's soft flesh-like vinyl form is inflatable and she stand 5' 4" tall. Her soft life-like body...... "Only $9.95.

But don't forget also, the electric toothbrushes, electric carving knives, electric card shufflers. You might wonder why all this crap is produced when people all over the world are crying out for stuff they really need, and which they can easily and cheaply produce themselves. You might wonder why no-one is doing much about it, you might ask why. Don't ask your electric toothbrush — ask yourself.