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Friday, April 17th, 2009When the recession first began to bite last year it was as if people thought the world was about to stop. They were caught like rabbits in the headlights of the abyss. As it has turned out the world did not stop turning, the stars did not go out, and not everyone went out of business. Instead, since then there have been subtle shifts and changes, more emotional than physical, whose waves have resonated and rippled through all areas of our lives, including that of design. Affecting consumers, manufacturers and designers.
Until this moment the phenomenal popularity of makeover shows and the focus on celebrity lifestyles managed to produce an anxiety in people who thought their existence would be validated if they bought the right “stuff”. Magazines encouraged people to “get the look for less”, and this all fed in to people’s insecurity. They hoovered up anything that glittered, and the trend became that people were happy to pay £500 for a “classic design” copy which had no intrinsic value, rather than spend £1,000 on an original which might actually be worth £1,000. Manufacturers were ready to feed this appetite by rushing to China and the Far East where they could churn out the numbers and maximise their margins, without a thought for the more emotional/cerebral part of the consumer experience. It was money for old rope, leaving the consumers with possessions that were often of no real value – without any originality, or integrity in either design or manufacturing.
