POST-WAR DESIGN
By A. E. DAVIS sHOUSANDS of words have already been written on pro- duction and distribution after the war. It is well that we hould think now about these factors in post-war industry, out what of another, less publicised, factor—design ? Though hen neglected, design is by no means unimportant. Some lungs (golf clubs and racing aeroplanes, for instance) have ally to be designed to do their job efficiently and their design roves pleasing to the eye—automatically, without conscious fort on the designer's part to give them an aesthetic appeal. )n the other hand, the appearance of many manufactured -lroducts cannot achieve perfection solely as a result of func- onal efficiency; efficiency must come first, but appearance iso must be consciously planned and not left to chance, if it to approach perfection.
So much of our everyday environment is man-made: not only streets and buildings but smaller things—desks and doorknobs, frocks and furniture, tractors and tea-sets. The ppearance of these things is obviously important if you admit hat environment has any influence at all on those who live n it. While nobody could be satisfied with the average tandard of design, nor the efforts made to grasp the problems of design, in British industry as a whole, there was certainly in improvement during the 1930's in the appearance of many hings that people with medium incomes could buy. Designers f products as varied as Gordon Russell furniture, Keith turray's glassware, Talbot motorcar bodies and Romary iscuit-tins were by their individual achievements helping to aise the general standard. From William Morris onwards writers on industrial design have been emphasising one great difference between our age and earlier ages, which is likely to prove an obstacle to good design, that is, the great gulf fixed between designer and maker, the " maker " of most things being no longer an individual craftsman but a set of machines and their minders. This gulf will presumably remain in the after- nr period, for it seems as inseparable from mass-production mass-production itself seems inseparable from the main- tenance of accustomed standards of living.
As far as one can at present judge, other conditions affecting ndustrial design may on the contrary be greatly changed after he war—in particular, the governing motive of industry, which f course controls the motives of the designer-for-industry. Today, thanks to E.P.T. and State control of industry, produc- mn.for profit is, to some extent at least, replaced by pro- duction for use—the State exercising control in the interests of the community. Having thus assumed control in time of war, it is unlikely to cease to control in time of peace. Nobody except the few who succeeded in being cocks-of-the-walk can wish to see a return to the madly competitive dividend- dominated industrial set-up of pre-war years ; certainly not the designer.
Before the war, even those manufacturers who were conscious of the selling-power of design were often forced to create an artificial demand for their goods, and found it more immediately Profitable to strive for novelty than for absolute beauty in the aPpearance of their products. Hence the yearly spate of new radio-cabinets, one • year's design being often no more beautiful (and no more useful) than the previous year's, but Tended solely to sell new sets by making old sets appear obsolete. Hence, too, that notorious funeral-pyre, a few years ago, of motor-cars scrapped while still serviceable, because they were outmoded in appearance. If usefulness controls production, there can no longer be a glut of manufactured goods for which demand must be forced by the prostitution of design ; the designer will be working in a world where design that is good by permanent aesthetic standards is at least as welcome as catchpenny design for which the best that can be said is that it is slickly fashionable.
Besides this social change affecting post-war design, there are other changes that may be described as mechanical. First: much old machinery will have been melted-down for scrap- metal, or else modified of sheer necessity to the changed demands of war-time production. So design will be less closely fettered by the productive limitations of existing plant. Second : new materials developed in war-time will almost certainly prove adaptable to peace-time needs, providing (as in the plastics industry, 1933-39) new scope for the designer whose training has not been confined to one material, wood or glass or silver, but whose outlook is broad enough to envisage the new possi- bilities offered by a new material, and the new technique that it demands.
Better design in the post-war years, when these changes make it possible, must not be restricted to the things bought by the wealthy and the comparatively well-to-do. Those who have less money should not have to buy less efficient or uglier things, for there is no fundamental reason why well-designed products should cost more than poorly-designed ; when they do, it is because commercial considerations of novelty and " exclusive- ness " are involved. That good design can be realised cheaply, and will sell when it is so realised, is evident from the pre-war success of the Finmar furniture, designed by Alvar Aalto (to quote only one outstanding example).
So much for design in relation to its " producers " and its " consumers." As for the inherent nature of post-war design itself, it should, I think, be not only post-war but English. War has made us realise how much we value the Englishness of familiar things in our surroundings, both natural and man- made, and perhaps this realisation will find expression after the war in a characteristic English style in the design of everyday things. We can be English without being insular: no style was more international than the Gothic of the great cathedral- building ages, yet an English Gothic cathedral has an English character, and a French Gothic cathedral has a character is distinctly French.
Not only can an English style in industrial design be evolved, it must be, if export-trade is to be encouraged. For really English design, provided it is at the same time good design, there will always be a demand abroad. It is a chastening thought for living designers that the name of Wedgwood does not, to the average American, imply the fine contemporary designs of that famous pottery, but reproductions of the blue- and-white wares of its eighteenth-century founder. Chastening, too, to think that the most popular English jewellery in the United States is the heavy Victorian silver bracelet, for which export-buyers scoured the country's second-hand shops before the war. English industrial design after the war must be post- war in spirit as in fact ; but it must also have the essentially English character that the world saw and liked in the work of past designers.
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