A common sense that finds the extra in the ordinary

The British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once wrote that it requires a very unusual mind to undertake an analysis of the obvious, and yet it is this very obviousness, this ordinariness, that has long been a topic of inquiry in design criticism. This thing that American novelist Walker Percy called “everydayness” has everything to do with the performance of things around us -- which, come to think of it, is really quite extraordinary. Ordinary things have long held their appeal in literature as catalysts for the familiar, but where do the things around us come from? Our lives are filled with myriad objects that collectively inform our actions, reactions and interactions: from cars to computers, toothbrushes to telephones, doorknobs to diaper pails, steering wheels to shopping carts. The list is inexhaustible, and each item’s unique provenance is perhaps equally so. Arguably, to deconstruct such objects is one way to better understand the world around us. How do they respond to and reveal our personal narratives? How does their design tell us about who we are or who we might become? And why are such questions worthy of our attention or even relevant at this point in history?

Several new books on the design of everyday things are attempting to answer some of these questions, offering proof, if nothing else, that the obvious can never be analyzed enough. Written not by designers but by a historian, an economist, engineers and a social scientist, these books offer a panoramic view of design set against the backdrop of social, industrial and cultural evolution over the last century. As such, they bring a curious anthropological focus to design, a perspective that, despite its refreshing objectivity, occasionally suffers from a kind of blurred distance. Looking from the outside in, they view design as preternaturally flawed, subject to fluctuating markets and consequent shifts in personal taste, economic stability and technological change.

Had these books been written by designers or even design theorists, they likely would have looked, too, from the inside out: In the practice of design, it is this kind of penetrating scrutiny that is equally if not more critical. (Legendary designer Charles Eames once said that recognizing a need is the primary condition for design. He never said it was the only condition.) While they do much to locate design in culture, these books do little to illuminate the culture of design: not the culture of oversized celebrity monographs or branded merchandise so much as an underlying ideology that demands of its makers both a macro and more critical micro view, mirror perspectives that give rise to the deeply considered, magically transformed -- and ultimately designed -- thing.

The champion of everyday things and the ingenuity by which they become manifest is Henry Petroski, who, as he did in “The Pencil” and “The Evolution of Useful Things,” again demonstrates his indefatigable capacity for explaining the minutiae of our world in magnificent detail. In his latest book, “Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design,” he shares his trenchant observations about the social, formal -- and in some cases, unpredictable -- reasons why things are as they are, or aren’t as they should be, or might be, or used to be, or could be, or might never be. Along the way, he stops to examine just about everything: the kitchen sink, the doorknob, the flashlight, the potato peeler and the history of the phone keypad -- here offering a compelling rationale for bringing back the rotary dial’s alphanumeric combinations, numbers like BUtterfield-8 that typified the glorious age before touch-tone. Consider MU 5-1234: “The MU indicated ... that the telephone being called was located in the Murray Hill section of [New York City],” the author explains, “which is the area where the Public Library now sits, and before that a reservoir holding water brought in by the Croton aqueduct.” His comprehensive intellectual reach is made more accessible by a wealth of personal anecdotes, a macro-micro balancing act combining authoritative rhetoric with a kind of amiable rant. Petroski is the John McPhee of design writing: Who else could painstakingly trace the evolution of the Dixie cup so unerringly, without missing a single note?

An engineer by training, Petroski has an understanding of what makes things tick and gives detailed explanations of, say, the spring-loaded cup holder in his Volvo. He is also an educator, and his clear language balances both the engineering-speak and an unparalleled appetite for arcana: From a pragmatic account of the evolution of Hewlett-Packard’s thermal inkjet cartridge to a lyrical spin on the elusive design variables of duct tape, he dutifully records their multiple details and reflects on the inevitable design imperfections along the way. Though occasionally stalled by some more uninspiring details, his writing remains a masterful expression of how design affects the civilized world and deserves a place in the canon of design literature.

Any social analysis of the history of design is likely to consider objects for both their novelty and their nostalgia, and it is this latter consideration that best characterizes John Lienhard’s book, “Inventing Modern: Growing Up With X-Rays, Skyscrapers and Tailfins.” From Buck Rogers to the Chrysler Airflow, Lienhard considers a particular strain of American Modernism through the personal lens of his own boyhood. While this book reflects a fascination with how things work, it also is a memoir, replete with subjective, idiosyncratic and deeply nostalgic associations. Volleying between personal recollection and factual chronicle, the author (also an engineer) expresses himself with a kind of evangelical zeal: The pioneering days of pilots Charles Lindbergh and Beryl Markham are retold, for example, as a loose metaphor for his own coming of age. Less successful are his forays into art and design history, which tend to be more mechanical than analytical. A cryptic summary of the early days of photography cites the seminal 1913 Armory Show not so much to reflect on the shifting climate in artistic expression but to segue to a discussion about the role of armories by then-emerging labor unions. Similarly, an abridged history of the contributions of Eames serves not as a commentary on design so much as an opportunity to introduce American artist Alexander Calder. Here the author expertly critiques Calder the engineer -- his understanding of motion, his sense of geometry, form and balance. Though this is an unusual argument in an art history sense, it succeeds in pragmatically repositioning Calder’s work within the context of mechanical progress, creative opportunity and the making of a new kind of American design.

Design is, however, best understood as an international language, with designers its formal interpreters. In this view, it is in the process of translation itself, Here is where the tension between product and process becomes especially critical: Is it enough to consider the artifact as evidence of the problem solved, as an expression of the idea revealed? Or is the finished object merely a fragment of a much deeper and ongoing process of discovery? While it remains tricky to try to illuminate the design process per se, it is enormously valuable to consider some of the more experimental phases in the actual evolution of the object. The origins of work by such accomplished designers as William Morris, Buckminster Fuller and Jasper Morrison are magnificently presented in “The Origin of Things,” a new book edited by Dutch curator Thimo te Duits, which thoughtfully illuminates the way designers translate ideas into things. Here it is the deconstructed form (and not the finished object) that is examined -- and it is in the process of deconstruction itself that new ideas are revealed. If the designer is credited with reducing a complex idea to a simple, accessible form, an equal value is placed on a flexible mind capable of enabling a broader set of applications to take place. (A flower vase inspired by a bacterial sample demonstrates precisely this kind of visionary thinking.) More than 30 designers are featured in this volume, published to accompany an exhibition in the Netherlands, resulting in a well-documented and elegantly produced international survey of textile, product, graphic and architectural design that demonstrates how the act of design is something decidedly more than the sum of its parts.

The same cannot be said of Virginia Postrel’s book “The Substance of Style,” which lacks the vision, authority and skill demanded of its highly ambitious subject. Using the remarkably unstable notion of popular culture as a basis for evaluation, the author considers “style” (a term she uses interchangeably with “aesthetics”) and its growing value in contemporary culture. As a journalist, Postrel is an enthusiastic researcher. As an economist, she recounts social and statistical trends that help explain how capitalism and consumerism create a need for design and help satisfy that need. But as a text on design, her work is poorly researched and peculiarly written. More like a self-help tract than the savvy social critique it aspires to be, Postrel’s book -- peppered with pithy prognostications that are neither imaginative nor particularly convincing -- suffers from an irksome sense of bravado that, given her spotty knowledge of design, is sadly misguided. Her central thesis argues that the democratization of taste has resulted in a culture that places a high premium on the visual. (According to Postrel, “aesthetics have become too important to be left to the aesthetes.”) Claiming that “function alone does not suffice,” she suggests that consumers seek a healthy balance between “style” and “substance.” “The aesthetic imperative,” she imperiously declares, “is here to stay.”

If her blanket assumptions lack a persuasive connection to both theory and example, she also fails to understand how the vocabulary of design -- the language used to discuss and describe the visual world -- can itself be a useful investigative tool. Instead, adopting horse-racing lingo to cite the brand promise of Sephora, the cosmetics chain, the author posits a new aesthetic “trifecta” (was there ever an old one?) that unites “freedom, beauty and pleasure.” Perhaps most distressingly, she ignores the design history of the last century, offering instead her own, somewhat clumsily abridged take on the Modernist legacy: “Ours is a pluralist age in which styles coexist to please the individuals who choose them,” she asserts. How did Postrel manage to write this book and simultaneously sleep through the last half-century? Woefully absent are references to a host of acclaimed writers -- from Rudolph Arnheim to Gyorgy Kepes, Dave Hickey to Elaine Scarry -- on the occasionally colliding but decidedly separate subjects of postmodern ideology, aesthetic integrity and the enigma of beauty itself.

Sociologist Harvey L. Molotch reveals similar limitations in his book, “Where Stuff Comes From.” Quoting liberally from noted experts, he offers pared-down definitions of art that lack both subtlety and substance: “Something becomes art,” writes Molotch, “through achieving in the viewer an intense lash-up of connotations, a congealing that gives emotional force even to details like a certain physical curve, minor indentation or nipplelike bump.” The author goes on to refer to a lamp finial before turning to a more subdued explanation of the relationship between art and utility in design. Inflated statements of questionable accuracy abound, which, if occasionally entertaining (“commercial art is an oxymoron”), are largely without theoretical foundation. Paradoxically, the author’s repeated use of the term “stuff” to reference design lends a note of false humility to an argument that otherwise seems desperate for academic credibility. Overall, he tends to dismiss style considerations (“Bauhaus stuff represents, in my view, just another style”) in favor of more resonant connections to -- and observations about -- culture, ethnicity, economic diversity and social utility. Given Molotch’s rather pedestrian skills as an art critic, this is perhaps fortunate.

While efforts to demystify the creative process are almost inevitably doomed to failure, Molotch’s attempts to explore the amorphous area otherwise known as “design research” are worth reading. From improvised scenarios on usability to the finer points of ethnographic study, he details some of the principal dynamics of identifying and beginning to solve a design problem. Here, too, serious reflection is interrupted by nonsensical asides. Molotch rightly characterizes the group dynamic in many large design offices as being collaborative and non-hierarchical, but do we also need to know that in such workplaces “there seem to be lots of parties and silly prizes”? He accurately portrays some of the visualization tools that designers employ in their work -- model building, rapid prototyping -- yet says: “When I asked designers about the source of their ideas ... they were nice enough to provide some answers, a number of which I will repeat. But I think it was a bit forced.”

It is unfortunate that in an industry in which one need not be certified to practice, anyone can label him- or herself a designer. Apparently this holds true for certain design writers as well. A good writer will dig a little deeper and see things not as they are but as they could be. The same can be said for designers: At the end of the day, it’s how we locate the extraordinary in the ordinary. It may not be obvious, but it’s what design is all about. *