The Metamorphosis of Twentieth Century “Good Design” to (Inherently Good) Industrial Design in the Twenty-First Century

Industrial Design in the contemporary era stems from the vast heritage of the twentieth century; enormous amounts of investigation have been done during this period in order to better define what industrial design actually entails and how it can be better fit to cater the needs of a fast-changing society. It was then, at an almost amorphous, embryonic stage, when schools like Bauhaus tried to implement means of unifying this emerging domain into a rational practice. During the following decades, designers strived to implement appropriate standardizations, given how the main catalyst of these efforts was the ubiquitous need for high quality objects for the masses. These efforts led to one of the main ideological pillars of the late twentieth century legacy – the idea of ‘good design’ – which eventually became almost a blueprint in the practice of design.

This article dares ask the question: How relevant is it today?

The new century dawned with its own new set of challenges for designers: new types of products and new needs of new generations. These provide the grounds for redefining what Industrial Design ought to implement in its practices, which can entail the metamorphosis of the ‘good design’ heritage into a broader, more natural approach organically implemented in the design process.

As such, this article proposes to both explore whether or not the ‘good’ denominator for contemporary Industrial Design is still needed, and also expose its current challenges as distinctive from the ones of the twentieth century. One consideration can be how Industrial Design, given its legacy, is now mature enough for it to no longer need the ‘good’ denominator – perhaps it has become ‘inherently good’. Moreover, perhaps ‘bad design’ is nowadays a symptom of a disease which exceeds the boundaries of Design, and reaches into societal, economic and cultural scopes, thus alleviating the need for separate denominations.