Going Wild With Wild Things: An Interview with Dave Eggers

Plastic Dreams by Charlotte and Peter Fiell, aims to be, as it observes on its back cover “quite simply the definitive guide to plastics in design.” Indeed, Phillippe Decelle of the Plasticarium in Brussels agrees; “Plastic dreams is outstanding. No one icon is missing.” Core77 didn’t even know there was a Plasticarium, although our enthusiasm is strong. In a rare moment of candor, however, we must admit that we’re simply not qualified to assess the whether one icon is missing. What we do know is that the Fiells have long dominated ID history course syllabi with books like Modern Furniture Classics, so critiquing their content is tough, because they literally wrote the book on industrial design history.

As they’ve just branched out from Taschen with their own imprint “Fiell” (a slightly easier decision to critique in the fading era of print journalism), the couple was gracious enough to sit down for an interview regarding their new imprint and its first ID centric book, Plastic Dreams. Plastic Dreams follows the same format as nearly every other Charlotte & Peter book we’ve read: introduction followed by chronological product spreads (two pages, clean grid, explanatory text, simple product shots against gray or white backgrounds). Of course, Core wouldn’t be Core if we hadn’t asked why their work rarely presented us with process: gritty studio shots, battered molds, ideation sketches that had little bearing on the finished product, etc. With a heavy heart, Peter explained that people just didn’t buy books big on process … they tried. So Core readership, if you want juicy product shots (and we think you do), you’ve got to get out there and support the supple pages of traditional print media with your wallets.

Instead of process shots, however, the Fiells present something almost, but not quite as good. The photographs of all the watershed products included in their book are all of “ideal, early-run” examples of seminal design classics. Given their history at Sotheby’s and the V&A museum, Charlotte and Peter can literally tell the difference between an Eames PAW chair in the first run of 2,000 by Zenith, and between the non-Zenaloy non-Zenith reproductions to follow. We here cannot tell the difference, even though we look at this stuff all day (we never heard of the catchy Zenaloy either, at least until we read the book). That’s why office manager, designers and auctioneers keep the Fiell’s compendiums around. Even more remarkably, the Fiells care so much that if they couldn’t find the perfect version of a design classic, they bought it. Plasticarium be damned; we know where our field trip will take us, so apologies in advance for knocking on a West London studio door.

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One might hope that the real estate bubble and 2008 bust might shatter once and for all the myth of the rational consumer, but unfortunately our profligate ways don’t show any signs of slowing. John Stuart Mill coined the term homo economicus, to refer to an idealized human consumer who always behaved with rational self interest. Salespeople, however, whether hawking Cadillacs or Gucci loafers, have long realized that J.S. Mill was a little off the mark. When it comes to money, human beings are, well, more than a little bit crazy. While a few notable psychologists and economists have been chipping away at the efficient market hypothesis since the 1950s, their thinking hasn’t yet trickled down to the business community. With his book Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of it), William Poundstone finally takes the last 40 years of economic psychology from the lab to the showroom.

While the cover of Priceless shows a price tag in relief with successive markdowns and the subtitle includes the parenthetical “and how to take advantage of it,” Priceless spends far more time on the history of economic psychology than the pricing games any prospective seller can play. That said, the source material that Poundstone is drawing from is exceptionally dry and often mathematical, so readers should be thankful that the author does an exceptional job of presenting difficult to grasp material in an entertaining and engaging way. Priceless is cut into short quick chapters that bounce quickly through decades of research and science using anecdote and analogy, before settling down into analysis and application about halfway through the book.

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Warren Berger’s gave his new book Glimmer the rather lofty subtitle “How design can transform your life, and maybe even the world.” We at Core77 are certainly biased, but there’s no doubt that we’re occasionally guilty of the same hyperbole. What the “design will change the world” camp often ignores is that major social problems they try to solve with design are just that, social problems; issues that involve a diverse range of constituencies, largely amoral economic forces and self-interested politics. Idealistic designers can’t simply push “good” design into the marketplace, but often presume that transformative design can be done at the drafting table instead of understanding that manufacturing product is only the beginning (or maybe even that a manufactured product is the problem). Consequently , after reading a multitude of “Business = Design” books, this reviewer was thrilled to read the term “wicked problem” about halfway through. In the glossary, Berger defines wicked problems as “multifaceted and complex problems whose incomplete or contradictory nature is such that each attempted solution often seems to create a new problem.” Unlike many design books, Glimmer goes out of it’s way to focus not only on designing objects for human interaction, but also to designing systems and structures for human behavior.

Not content with one subtitle, Berger also offers a co-pilot after his byline, “featuring the ideas and wisdom of design visionary Bruce Mau.” Mau became famous for his collaboration with the Institute without Boundaries, Massive Change, which was an unabashedly positive exhibit and book about socially conscious design. While Glimmer uses Mau’s life and ideas about design, Berger interviews and discusses enough other design luminaries that Massive Change seems more like a jumping off point than a framework. Each chapter is titled with a principle, and while some of them are taken from Mau’s Manifesto: “Ask stupid questions,” “Go Deep,” “Work the metaphor,” and my favorite “Begin Anywhere,” the other six chapters are from other sources. Indeed it feels as though Berger has been shadowing Core77 for the past several years, having been in the audience with us as we listened to Cameron Sinclair and Emily Pilloton at the ICFF and heard Michael Wolff berate the audience at Designism 2.0. Next time aspiring design students ask me which books to read to prepare for school or work, I’ll just give them Berger’s bibliography.

Broadly, Glimmer is broken into four sections, involving progressively smaller social groupings: Universal, Business, Social, and finally Personal. All of this seeks to answer the question he asks at the end of the introduction, “What if we looked at the world as a design project — how might we begin to make it better?” In the beginning, the answer is to think like a child. The first chapter is entitled “Ask stupid questions,” and references IDEO’s “Five Whys” methodology, where the design researcher or ethnographer is instructed to engage in the child’s infinite regress of asking why over and over again to get to the bottom of a problem. In constructing Glimmer, the reader is taken on a journey as Berger asks seemingly everyone, “why?,” until he gets his answer.

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