Psychology — 1940–1960
From World War II to HFG Ulm
Psychology
WWII and the post-war period found Design to be of central importance to society and the global economy. Psychology played a central role in many areas of the period from Operations Research and propaganda to consumerism. New tools were used to guide our understanding of the world and to fool the enemy. Design methods were used to extract creative performance from individuals and teams to develop weapons and new products at ever increasing velocities. Design education with the Ulm School of Design considered the psychological aspects of products as well as the challenges faced by misinformation and public opinion. World War II demonstrated the need to consider the ethics and responsibilities of the designer in society. We began to recognize the limits of our planet and its resources, and needed new design frameworks to apply our skills.
An inflatable dummy tank, source: United States Army
Header image: Robert Capa (Magnum)
Assignments for the Class
Readings & Assignments
The readings for the week include:
ASSIGNED READING: HfG Ulm: A Personal View of an Experiment in Democracy and Design Education, Heiner Jacob, 1988, Journal of Design History, Vol. 1, No. 3/4, Oxford University Press on behalf of Design History Society
SUPPLEMENTARY READING (SCAN): How RAND Invented the Postwar World, Virginia Campbell, 2004, Invention & Technology, RAND Corporation
METHOD GUIDANCE: Visualizations That Really Work, Scott Berinato, 2016, Harvard Business Review
Assignments for the week are as follows:
HISTORICAL PRODUCT PORTFOLIO: Locate a relevant and impactful product from the period we are discussing (1940-1960). Discuss:
Why does the product exist and what needs were met?
Why is the product important?
Who did the product empower/disempower?
What behaviors did the product change or create?
METHODS TOOLKIT: Complete a 2×2 Matrix:
Locate the 2×2 Matrix on the Mural board
Duplicate the matrix and add your name
Locate inages of information graphics that represent each quadrant (4)
Voila, you have completed a 2×2 matrix
Scan the attached article if you want more information on the activity
Goals for the Class
Students will be able to articulate how Industrial Design evolved during the period after World War I through the post-WWII period. They will appreciate the pressures placed on society during and after the war, and how new practices and needs evolved, particularly with respect to information. HfG Ulm figure prominently in the discussion of information and media, and students will understand the reasons for the school’s establishment and how the curriculum evolved in an attempt to challenge information overload. We will discuss the challenges of design education on the context of these vast changes.
The Consumer Economy
“Thus it might be said that good taste passed from the advertisement to the package, and from the package to the product, keeping pace with the growing appreciation of taste on the part of the public due to increased culture and sophistication. Immediately these better-designed goods and packages demanded a better environment in which to be sold, and thus we have a revolution in the furnishing of shops and stores.”
The Context
World War II as a conflict brought mass destruction to Europe and around the world. The global effort to contain Fascism required world-wide supply chains and industrial output on a scale never seen. The effort also require ingenuity. Designers rose to the challenge of providing new designs to support the war effort.
After the war, design education considered the role of design in the lives of the public.
Image above: Trinity atomic bomb test (1945)
Image right: O.S.S. Presentation Room, Eero Saarinen
The wealthiest countries in Western Europe along with the United States continued to grow at a rate beyond the rest of the world. As noted on the source website, “Prosperity is a very recent achievement that distinguishes the last 10 or 20 generations from all of their ancestors.” And, prosperity was unevenly spread around the globe. We will discuss this inequality in future classes. (sources: Our World in Data)
The Post-WWI United States
The United States was in a position of strength after World War I, the war having devastated its economic competitors. “As a result, America was the preeminent industrial nation after World War I and its economy expanded rapidly during the 1920s, due to a combination of technology advances, managerial innovation, and aggressive marketing.” (V. Margolin) Additionally, American corporations developed research labs to support the development of new technologies and materials. Synthetic fibers such as Nylon resulted in affordable fabrics. International conglomerates provided a global reach for American products, and drove access to raw materials.
Nylon Ball Gown, credit: Science History Institute (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)
Waste & Want
The Waste in Industry Report (1921) advocated for efficient manufacturing practices and a reduction in waste. Cheap products and waste led to the founding of the Consumers Union (1936). The advertising industry felt that consumers were not purchasing enough. Elmo Calkins coined the term “consumer engineering” in 1932 to support a new science of demand generation through “progressive obsolescence.” Women were the identified as the primary consumers. New appliances and services were marketed through national advertising campaigns.
Image credit: GE Photograph Collection
Modern Design
Modern design was being introduced to the United states through exhibits by museums and department stores. The Machine Art exhibition at MoMA in 1934 was one such example. Between the austerity of the European modernists and the advertising driven American designers lay a new breed of designers looking toward a harmonious design future devoid of ornament. In MoMA’s Organic Design in Home Furnishings exhibition (1941), Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen both won prizes for chairs using plywood shells.
Installation view, The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Photograph by Samuel Gottscho.
Work area at the Johnson Wax Building (1939)
Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Streamlining & Cleanlining
An “appliance” is “an artificial part or mask that is worn as part of an actor's makeup or costume” Many of the leading American industrial designers of the period began their careers as illustrators or theater designers. However, some designers began to dig beneath the surface. Norman Bel Geddes surveyed women in support of his work for Standard Gas Equipment Corporation to understand the latent needs of customers. Ensuring that appliances were easy to clean was an important need. White represented cleanliness. Modular panels made for an easily expanded product line. Henry Dreyfuss analyzed products to identify how a product could emerge from the necessary improvements. The Bell Model 302 telephone unified mechanical components in a shell. Streamlining and Cleanlining represent the design methods of American designers through much of the century.
Image Right: Modular Stove, Norman Bel Geddes (1933)
Image below: Model 302 Telephone, Henry Dreyfuss (1937)
“An object is streamlined when its exterior surface is so designed that upon passing through a fluid such as water or air the object creates the least disturbance in the fluid in the form of eddies or partial vacua tending to produce resistance.”
Bel Geddes
Comprehensive Design
Raymond Loewy best represents the role of the design “businessman” who created a stage from which to sell the services of the office. Thinking comprehensively about design, everything from branding through retail environments were considered. “Besides the equipment the Loewy office redesigned for International Harvester, the designers also updated the company’s logotype, redesigned the packaging for the myriad replacement parts it distributed, and created clean modern designs for a range of modular International Harvester Servicecenters, where new products were sold.” The prominent industrial designers of this period were often business-driven managers who led large offices of multi-disciplinary professionals.
Time Magazine cover featuring Raymond Loewy (1949)
Thoughts to Consider
Consider how how the Frigidaire kitchen compares to the Frankfurt Kitchen.
Frigidaire Exhibit (1939), Bel Geddes
Corporate Design Departments
Ann Swainson was recruited to lead the Montgomery Ward Bureau of Design in Chicago in 1930. Prior to this, the retailer was challenged by product quality and price. This necessitated bringing design capabilities in-house. Swainson led a staff of over 30 designers focused on a number of critical initiatives.
Redesigned the catalog using photos of live models
Products including appliances, furniture, clothing, and utensils
Managed cross-disciplinary design staff
Designers such as Richard Latham worked in the office before moving to Loewy’s Chicago office.
Image right: Montgomery Ward Catalog Page (1941)
Images below: Lego building set (1952); Chevrolet Bel Air (1957)
More Than Enough
R. Buckminster Fuller believed that we needed to do more with less and that we could provide for every living person with the resources available to us. Fuller believed that a "maximum gain of advantage from minimal energy input” would result in an excess of material and effort. This excess would become available to the global population.
Dymaxion House Model (1927), Buckminster Fuller
Levittown planned community in New York (1958)
Thoughts to Consider
Consider the contrast between needs and desires in society.
Image: 1960 Presidential Debate
Design During World War II
Designers created everything from camouflage to aircraft for the war effort. Experimentation with materials was important to the war effort, since metals were in short supply. Materials like fiberglass and plywood could be formed to create new shapes that performed better than pervious designs. The Eames office produced a number of products using plywood, including a stretcher.
Information designed to support effective decision making also provided opportunities for designers to consider environments and display of data. New computational frameworks and tools brought new scientific rigor to design thinking and systems thinking.
Eames Plywood Sprint (1943)
Operations Research
Operations Research was a cross-disciplinary approach to analyzing and solving complex problems and understanding systems.
Scientific Training — Link between development and operations
Rational Analysis — Effective use of current equipment
Decision Making — Use of statistics to determining outcomes
Resource Planning — The military, research labs, and private industry worked together to coordinate the mobilization effort.
Planning and financing of new weaponry
Integration with military strategy
Training programs for workers
Map of Kammhuber Line
User-centered Design
The Model 500 Telephone design by Henry Dreyfuss sparked a “design revolution.” In addition to user-centric research resulting in a handset that could be held in place by a shoulder, the new design was faster at dialing (with refinement). Other issues were discovered in market.
“When phones were first introduced by AT&T they really didn’t want women talking so much on the phone. They thought this is a serious instrument that should be used to call the doctor in an emergency. Women shouldn’t be tying up the line with their idle chatter, and then they soon discover that, actually, this was their market. That using the phone to socialize and relax was actually valuable, and women became more actively invited to use the telephone.” (E. Lupton)
As an evolution of the Model 302, the 500 was successful in driving adoption of the telephone in the home. It was also a solid foundation upon which to launch the successors, including the Princess telephone.
Model 500 Telephone (1953), Smithsonian
Design Methods
The Design Methods Movement is considered to have been initiated with the “Conference on Systematic and Intuitive Methods in Engineering, Industrial Design, Architecture and Communications” which was held in London in 1962. However, with the alternate reading provided for the Design Methods topic area — The Processes of Creative Thinking, Newell, Shaw, and Simon (Rand, 1958) — we can see that defining problems was a central challenge. “Design methods originated in new approaches to problem solving developed in the mid-20th Century.” Removing the mystery of the “creative process” and supporting systematic approaches to problem solving was intended to accelerate innovation. Methods were also expected to help designers explore and solve the new challenges introduced in the Twentieth Century — “Wicked Problems.”
Image left: Conference on Design Methods program cover
Thoughts to Consider
Consider the factors that contributed to the Model 500 telephone.
Technology adoption in US households, Our World in Data
“At the HfG, the social responsibility of the designer for the products he had shaped and for the people who had to use them was central.”
Dr. René Spitz
Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm
The Ulm School of Design was founded in 1953 by Inge Aicher-Scholl, Otl Aicher and Max Bill. A central objective was to provide a humanistic education to the designer. In contrast with solely considering form and beauty in artifacts, the designer was empowered to be an “integrator” who would bring a multi-disciplinary approach as well as systems-thinking to bear on the design process.
Inge Scholl and Otl Aicher wanted to create an institution linking creativity to everyday life in the aftermath of Nazism.
Multi-disciplinary: integrating art, craft and technology
Social Purpose: responsibility of the designer to society
System-thinking: integration of complex requirements
Max Bill, HfG-Archiv Ulm
HfG Ulm School Schematic (1951)
Braun SK4 (1958), Hans Gugelot and Dieter Rams
Thoughts to Consider
Consider how the teaching of design changed in this period.
Foundation Course exercise (1958-59), by John Lottes, HfG-Archiv/Ulmer Museum