Designer Cultural Understanding versus Market Surveys- Walter D. Teague

-

 
The Successful Design Business Practices of Walter Dorwin Teague
Part 4 of 5

 Design Research and Designer Cultural Sensitivity versus Market Surveys 

(click here for part 1, part 2, part 3)


Designers at the boards in the New York Teague office. About 1940. Photo by Stowe Myers.

    Teague believed in the designer’s intuitive sensitivity of culture and understanding of the client and end-user, to lead them to the best design solution.  Teague expresses the limitations of marketing and surveys in this speech in Detroit 1960:

“These people can’t tell you what they are going to like three years from now- that’s been completely proven; but they can’t even tell you what they will like today if you’ve never seen it.  So the designer will learn next to nothing from the quiz programs some companies conduct at great expense.  But the designer should be aware of and sensitive to the trends that are moving in this small, communicative world of ours….

And when you find this attitude of mind expressing itself in architecture, home and office furnishings, machine design, and a hundred fields of human endeavor, you had better get in tune with it.  It is the voice of your times speaking to you, and your sensitivity to this spirit of your age is your greatest asset.  The men who count heads and add up answers to questionnaires can produce no creative additive for your use: the people they question haven’t yet seen the thing that is going to thrill and excite them and it is your job to reveal it to them.” (Teague)

W. Dorwin Teague Jr. writes this about dealing with resistance to change:

“The client’s marketing group was sometimes more of a problem in getting a new design accepted than the engineering department.  With marketing we were dealing with intangibles difficult to define and pitting our recommendations against their years of experience in the industry.  I’m sure every designer has encountered the complaint that, ‘We tried that back in 1954 and it caused nothing but trouble’ or ‘the so-and-so company did that in 1962 and almost lost its shirt.’ These experiences may indeed have been bad news at the time but in the intervening years the public’s taste could have changed radically or new materials and techniques been developed which eliminated the original cause of the trouble.  Sometimes there was a reluctance to go to a radically new design because “it is ahead of its time.”  A favorite example used to justify this attitude was the Chrysler Airflow [automobile] which failed, not because it was ahead of its time, but because it was a supremely ugly design.” (Teague, W.D. Jr. 50)

    Teague was always prepared to deal with opponents to progress.  He had rational arguments ready to deal with those who were resistant to change.   He also directed his designers to be sensitive to culture, to have a pulse on the trends of the public, and trust their intuition, not market surveys.  He encouraged them to look to other innovative fields for ideas and inspiration.


Coming up next in the final part of this article:  “Design is our business, not theirs. We never show them sketches and never present alternatives.” – W.D. Teague

Works Cited


Teague, W. Dorwin Jr. Industrial Designer: the Artist as Engineer. Lancaster, PA: Armstrong World Industries, 1998. Print. 
Teague, Walter D. "The Responsibilities of the Industrial Designer. An Address to the Detroit Chapter, Industrial Designers Institute." Road & Track Jan. 1960.


 Follow the progress of the Teague documentary on Facebook and this blog. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Furniture Design Exhibition Seattle - Western ID graduates 2022 - part 2

-
Image
Chair, ottoman, and side table of aluminum and wood by Keaton LoCicero. The industrial design class of Western Washington University 2022 exhibited their final chair design prototypes at HenryBuilt in Seattle, WA, USA. June 10.  A one night only exhibition. Keaton spent hours polishing the interior surfaces of the aluminum. sketch models by Keaton LoCicero Chair and side table by Wylie Jacoy. Rocking chair of aluminum and woven fabric by Adele Houston.  An aluminum vase by Adele Houston Chair and ottoman design by Lili Heim. Constructed of bent polycarbonate and aluminum. Chair, ottoman, and side table design by Asaki Nelson. Constructed of CNC plywood. process photos and artifacts. Display posters Chair design by Matthew Seeman. detail. Constructed of cast aluminum and wood. All photos by Jason Morris. Please attribute the designer if re-posting. Follow Western Industrial Design program on Instagram:  wwu id (@wwuid) • Instagram photos and videos Join our ID program:...
Read more

Furniture Design Exhibition - Western ID graduates 2022 - part 1

-
Image
  Chair and ottoman design by Kelsey Leppek 2022 The industrial design class of Western Washington University 2022 exhibited their final chair design prototypes at HenryBuilt in Seattle, WA, USA. June 10.  A one night only exhibition. This set was made with bent steel tubing and fabric cushions. It was a packed crowd at the first graduate exhibition for WWU ID since 2019. Side chair by Brianna Brown 2022. Bent plywood connection detail. Brianna Brown. Bent plywood chair by Rafer Stromme. The two plywood forms are connected with a cast aluminum form. Transformable furniture design by Trinity Montgomery 2022. By changing the orientation and tying the braided rope this piece converts to various forms. Arm chair and side table by Dylan Willis 2022. This chair is made from aluminum sheet, cushions, and bolted together. It can be disassembled and packaged flat. Lounge chair of bent steel and felt by Bo Baird 2022. Each piece of felt strip was hand cut and connected with brass fasten...
Read more

New Furniture Designs for Working from Home

-
Image
Shift Divider Screen by Kelsey Leppek and Norman Rockwell 2020 Nobody expected a global virus quarantine, but here we are, trying to adapt our living spaces for homeschooling, class sessions, office meetings, and focused work in addition to everything else that we do at home. We quickly realized that our home spaces and furniture were not designed for these new functions. This spring, the industrial design students of Western Washington University worked on designing new furniture solutions for working at home. And they did it while working from home themselves. The Problems They first investigated the problems that we are experiencing during lock-down: Sharing small spaces. Multiple people sharing the kitchen table to do work. Lack of privacy. Lack of square footage. Bad acoustics for video calls and meetings. Echos, noise, distractions. Online video conferences are notorious for poor audio. Bad lighting for video calls and meetings. Most people look hor...
Read more