Marc Newson is a big deal in industrial design, with museum collections, a CBE, and membership on Time Magazine’s list of 100 most influential people. He has a new line of eyeglasses out, and in the process of talking about the differences between fashion and industrial designers (and what they need to learn from each other), he says this about Google Glass:
It’s a little bit like that wonderful invention called the Segway. It’s such a fantastic piece of technology but you just look like a complete dick when you drive around on it.
So that’s where the bridge to the world of fashion really doesn’t, or didn’t, work. That’s precisely the moment when I think the fashion world laughs at the world of industrial design, justifiably.
His underlying point, however, is even more interesting than that. Newson is highly critical of the way industrial designers bring products to market. The fashion world, he says, is vastly more efficient in moving from initial design to cash register, which contains lessons that the industrial world should learn.
Wearables are, in many ways, about bridging the gap between fashion and industrial design. This is worth reading if design and manufacturing is important to you.
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/48017592]