product trends in the 1980's

Enterprise and postmodern

• corporations

     Government in Britain had a very specific effect on design by privileging 'the designer' and design-led companies. Industry and the subsequent shift to a service economy put the emphasis on the consumer. Companies became international. People didn't only use the British products. They tended to accept the international products. At the same time, they had more choices to chose what they need such as the functions, colors, styles, etc.

Memphis styles: Memphis-----originated in 1981 in Milan and, centred around Ettore Sottsass Jr., effectively set on a commercial footing many ideas which had originated in the studio.

Nefertiti ceramic piece 1981 design by Matteo Thun
The ceramic is emphasized surface decoration, colour, and layers of meaning at the expense of apparent function.

Piccadilly table lamp 1982 design by Gerard Taylor

• Design as art

     design was generally collected for its visual identity and implicit cultural values rather than any premium on function or practicality.

Ron Arad: Combining playful forms and experiments with advanced technologies, Ron Arad has emerged as one of the most influential designers of our time. 

Hi-fi System

     A stereotype of Ron-the-strong, manfully teaching himself to weld, beat steel and forge brutal new forms from the roughest materials, prevailed until the late 1990s. The “volume” chairs like the 1988 Big Easy, made from sheets of bent and welded steel, demonstrated above all his fascination with the techniques and the visual effects of welding and polishing metal. 

Rover chair, 1981,Ron Arad

     A fusion of two ready-mades – a scrap yard seat from a Rover 200 car mounted on a frame of Kee-Klamp scaffolding originally designed in the 1930s. The Rover Chair and the products that followed – including the 1983 stereo cast in concrete and 1988 beaten steel Tinker chair – captured London’s early 1980s spirit of rugged individualism and post-punk nihilism set against a backdrop of urban blight. Arad represented a generation of self-taught designer-makers who began the decade making their own work out of economic necessity and ended it as the darlings of the newly-wealthy, commanding art-market prices for one-off pieces.

Floor lamp Armadillo

• Technology

     Because of the changing in polity and technology, artists and designers rise rapidly and became international.

MOGGRIDGE ASSOCIATES HEDDA  BEESE: solar lantern 1987

MOGGRIDGE ASSOCIATES HEDDA  BEESE: solar lantern 1986
TIM BROWN FOR MOGGRIDGE ASSOCIATES: Facsimile machine 1988/89

Apple-Macintosh-1984

     The prototype of MAC was Macintosh. It was invented in 1984. At that time, everyone desired to have a computer and the Macintosh was the best one.

• Hedonism

     People's desires being related to a good standard of living rather than the principle of good design. Products expressed people's imagination, and consumers desired cult objects.

DEREK FORST: Stereo cabinet 1987/88