Past

Looking at the gesture of gathering makes me reflect on what it is we do as industrial designers. I begin with looking at people gathering food in baskets. People also gather ideas in forms of drawings on paper in bundles or sketchbooks. Children gather acorns and autumn leaves. From the grocery store we gather items in baskets or carts and proceed to checkout where they are contained in bags. Each of these romantic little gestures of gathering show me physical or ephemeral things that people gathered and ways in which they are contained. All of these things reveal different products or systems for gathering. I thought investigating this topic from past to present and from different perspectives would give me a broad view of what industrial design was about.

So what is it? They say Industrial Design has to do with redesigning the function or aesthetic of a product, system or service. My RA wrote this definition down for us one day so I don't really know where it originated from. For me ID is about delivering an experience.

I like experiences.
I like learning from experiences.
I like gaining experiences.
I like sharing experiences.
And so on

I like gaining, gathering and attaining things and it makes me feel full-satisfied. It's as simple as food refuelling your body.

By exploring ways in which we gather we can pin point why people like to have so much. Track back and see where all the making of things happened to satisfy all that wanting to have. I think that was the industrial revolution. It is when mass production was a brilliant idea and put everyone on the same page by allowing people to own the same assortment of products. Like the Ford Model T.

Looking at the history of how human beings gathered things opens so many entry points into the history of ID: manufacturing, the user group's needs, material usage, transitional packaging, and specific products.