DESIGN IN INDUSTRY
THE citizens of London have by today become almost used to the gay advertisements with which the London Passenger Transport Board deco- rates the gloomy entrances to the Underground ; but they are still moved to pleasure and amusement by Mr. Nash's landscapes, Mr. Wadsworth's zoological objects, and the works of the other admirable artists employed by the L.P.T.B. The surprise and atten- tion they arouse, amid the wastes of hoardings, is sufficient proof of their commercial value. Mr. Frank Pick, who is vice-chairman of the L.P.T.B., is also chairman of the National Council of Art and Industry, appointed by the Board of Trade. He is well fitted, by his ideas and experience, for the position, and the Council, under his chairmanship, has now issued an admirable report on Design in Industry, with particular reference to the recruit- ment, training and position of designers.
The Report does not concern itself with insisting on the need for improving standards of design in industry-. It is indeed hardly necessary by now to emphasise the ugliness of the large mass of industrial products. It is plain for everyone to see who uses his eyes, and to those who use them sharply it is a per- petual cause for irritation, like an unpleasant itch on the face of the world. But the products of industry cannot be ignored, because they are essential to every- one. The Council's report suggests that by now a gradual improvement in their appearance is possible, especially in England. Having mastered questions of technique and production, large-scale producers are in a position to pay greater attention to questions of design-. The public itself desires an improvement ; and the enterprise of some firms, and the popularity of articles of good design imported from abroad, have shown that a decent appearance is in itself a highly marketable value. The Report remarks that the supremacy of Paris and Vienna in the production of articles of fashion and luxury, and of industrial designs, appears to be breaking down. Other countries are competing for that position, and it is for Great Britain also, with its great tradition of craftsmanship, to seize the opportunity. If seized, it would provide a valuable' market for exports ; one result, perhaps, might be the establishment in London of a world market for industrial designs such as now exists in Paris.
Great changes, however, are fitst of all necessary, and especially in the relation of the designer to industry. On this subject the Report makes its most interesting and valuable remarks. At present the designer falls into one of three groups. In most cases he is an employee of the firm, without artistic training, and produced from the ranks of the factory itself by what the Report calls " a process of in- breeding unsuitable to modern industry." In other cases, he is a free-lance designer whose work is sold to the firm for adaptation to its own purposes, or an independant artist, himself a producer, who has been commissioned for a particular job. In each case, the designer occupies an inferior position in the factory. His work is regarded as in no way comparable in importance with that of the engineer, the technician or the salesman. Very often, he does not know for what purposes his design will be adapted, in what materials it will be worked out, by what machines and what technique the finished article will be produced. Still less, usually, does he know the conditions of salesmanship, of public demand, which have to be considered if the product is to be saleable ; or understand the technique of mass-production to which his design must be suitable. It is not surprising, in these circumstances, that the design should usually fit the finished article like a badly fitting suit, or that, as the Report says, temperately : " the evidence which we have received suggests that one difficulty which has to be overcome is the existence of a certain amount of mistrust between artists and manufacturers." They regard each other indeed as mutual enemies ; yet what is needed is that they " should understand one another as partners in indus- trial production."
Whether this antipathy, today, can be overcome is a doubtful question, but the reasons for it arc not to be found either in the nature of art or in the nature of mass-production. But . if the designer is really to be a partner in production, he must have a responsible position in the industrial process, which will allow him to know the machines, the organisation, technique, materials, business methods which each contribute to the finished article to which he has to give a shape fitting its function and material. The Report is largely concerned with practical methods, of training and employment, which will give the designer this position ; but what is most remarkable in it is the understanding of the artist, not as an isolated individual, but as a responsible agent in an industrial process which is working to single end ; and that end is a finished article whose form springs naturally and gracefully from its material and its use. In this conception of the artist there is little that is new ; the idea of him as one in a community of workers, and of a work of art as the product of an infinitely varied pattern of work was preached long ago by William Morris and Ruskin, and realised in the building of the mediaeval cathedrals. What is valuable in the Report. is the practical application of this idea to the tech- nique, material and organisation of industrial mass-. production ; in. its ::.perception - also that modern industry, despite its infinite division of labour, is unified towards producing the finished article, which, if it is well produced, should express, by the decency and propriety of its appearance no less than by its utility, the unity of the process which has created it.
Previous page
