Objectified Film Review

The film Objectified by Gary Hustwit had its very original opening sequence, like Helvetica did. It began with leading viewers on the journey of the making of a chair. The narrator explains how there are so many assumptions made by people in seconds upon viewing an object, such as what it does, how well it does it, and how much it costs, for example. Furthermore, the object is clearly not just an object, and whether "intentional or not, speaks to who put it there", regarding the person that created it and decided the object's form, material, architecture, and how it connects to you. The movie then begins to follow the etching of the title "Objectified".

The documentary discussed how industrialization's main goal is mass production, or providing standardized objects for millions and millions of people. The best examples of industrial design are the ones that are the most inconspicuous (the Post-it).

Furthermore, there is a story embedded in every object. The Japanese toothpick with a top that has indentions can be broken off to show that it has been used, but it can also serve as a stand for you to place your toothpick on. This obviously reflects Japanese culture and the values and lifestyle that come with that culture. Henry Ford has even confirmed this by saying that "every object tells a story if you know how to read it".

Consultants are people that work with companies to design something. An important concept that was discussed was that if they know who the extremes are in an audience, such as a woman with arthritis, or an injured athlete, the middle group of people will take care of itself. Designers say that their main job is to try and figure out how to improve people's daily lives without them really knowing that they are thinking about it. Many designers are also bothered by the thoughtlessness of some products - "there are too many useless things out there".

Instead, good design can be said to be innovative, useful, aesthetically pleasing, able to make a product understandable, honest, unobtrusive, long-lived, consistent in every detail, environmentally friendly, and as little design as possible.

In this new generation, the form of a product bears no relation to its function anymore. Before, it was much easier to guess the function of an object by looking at its form. Because of new developments like the microchip, for example, this is no longer the case.

The documentary also addressed the issue of sustainability in design. This is a big problem because sustainability is about redesigning every aspect and it is difficult to find ways to dispose of things responsibly, even if many designers believe in it emotionally and/or mentally.

Finally, objects that have the most value are the ones that mean the most in your life. These objects reflect the true story of who you are and what "your personal narrative is" because you are the only audience that matters.

I thought the documentary was quite interesting and dealt with a unique subject matter. It also had many opinions from different designers all over the world and I felt that this made the documentary very credible and varied. It was somewhat lengthy but it did explore many issues in design in great detail, which I thought was impressive.