Remember life before Target? When most of us couldn’t afford Michael Graves teapots, and designer clothes by Isaac Mizrahi had designer price tags?
When cute but cheap kitchen utensils and snazzy, low-cost lamps were way too hard to find, particularly at the same store?
Over the past 10 or 15 years, design arrived in mainstream America. It came courtesy of Target, IKEA and other companies that work hard to keep costs low and creativity high.
A lecture series at the Rice Design Alliance in Houston through early February takes a look at this mass-market phenomenon. The former design director of IKEA, along with principal players from Wallpaper magazine, Michael Graves Design Group and Nike, will discuss how good but affordable design has changed not just what we buy, but what we now expect from new products.
“Design is about questioning,” says Donna Kacmar, an architect, professor and board member of the Rice Design Alliance. “There is no one right way” to do it.
Kacmar sat on the committee that put together the “Design Goes Mainstream” series. She says the goal of the event is to hear from companies whose products solve problems without sacrificing aesthetics.
“The thing that’s great about IKEA is that everything is designed twice – for its ultimate use and to be shipped flat-pack,” Kacmar says. “One design problem is about economy and globalization and production, and the other is simply about furniture.”
But perhaps the strongest force in popular design in the U.S. has been Target.
“Target was really at the forefront of all this,” Kacmar says. “Kmart had Martha Stewart, but Target is younger and not so serious.”
Arguably, Target’s greatest design coup to date has been affordable household items from the Michael Graves Design Group. In 1999, the group’s first collection of perky Target housewares, all inspired by the egg shape, helped fuel the chain’s low-cost, high-design revolution.
Included in the 150-piece line was a second cousin to the now-iconic “bird kettle” Graves designed for Alessi; rather than a small red bird that fit into the end of a smart metal spout, the Target kettle sported a coach’s whistle.
“A lot of our early invitations to do design were from European manufacturers,” says Donald Strum, a partner at Michael Graves Design Group. “No one was asking us in the States. People here didn’t (yet) question ergonomics or how things fit into their lives and the world.”
The group caught Target’s eye in 1998 when it designed scaffolding for the Washington Monument’s three-year restoration. Target, which helped sponsor the restoration project, liked what it saw. The scaffolding looked so good, Strum says, some people fought to leave it up indefinitely.
The Michael Graves Design Group has created more than 1,700 domestic products. It is made up mostly of architects.
“We think about the future in a different way,” Strum says. “Buildings aren’t torn down and exchanged every year. There’s a sense of timelessness to them. And we instill that sense of timelessness in all our products.”
Still, it is difficult to articulate why the public started expecting ordinary household items to work well, look good and cost less. Strum ventures: “I think people have become more discerning, and they’re looking for a certain level of escapism or experience in products. … Our products try to instill an experience of joy. You just don’t have to put up with an ugly carrot peeler.”
