Form and Content: "Objectified"

images courtesy of objectifiedfilm.com

     In the film Objectified, filmmaker Gary Hustwit, encourages us to notice our surroundings, and the thousands of objects that we interact with everyday in our lives.   He asks us to think about our relationship with these items, of why they look the way they do, how they are designed, who designs them, how they improve our lives, their cost to the environment, and how they are a reflection of us. In the film, the relationship between form and content is shown to be undergoing much change in a fast-paced world.
    Increasingly, form on the outside of designs does not appear to relate to content, for example if someone was looking at a spoon or a chair for the first time ever, they could probably guess through the form what their intended function was. Compare that to an iPhone, where outward appearance doesn't give much clue to function or content, an common aspect of products of the age of microchips.
     Apple is one company whose designs that seeks to pair down form so that it focuses on how you're going to use it, not really expressing its content on the outside so that it seems like a natural, organic aspect of our lives. Their intention is to make products that look un-designed; one way they do that is to simplify form, for example: making six parts of a product into one, and picking materials that express a clear sense of the company' and the content of their products: like slick aluminum surfaces or smooth white plastic frames.
    Designers also have to think about that their design end up in landfills, things shouldn't necessarily be built to be permanent or recyclable. Here, form should be designed with its whole life cycle with consumers in mind, expressing conscious content that is aware of its impact on the environment. All products, not matter how well the designers think they designed them, end up in landfills and one has to think about how those products affect the environment after they've been used.
    It seems that Hustwit is suggesting the future of form and content in design calls for much more conscious design: forms that better accommodate how users are going to experience their content, from first purchase to easy efficient use to disposal and how they impact the environment after they've served their purpose. Conscious design has the ability make the world a better place and improve our daily lives, when form and content work together to solve problems.