All language subtitles for BBC.The.Genius.of.Design.1of5.Ghosts.in.the.Machine.XviD.AC3.MVGroup.org.eng

TANNO Y: Attention, pIease.

At 1 :30 Mark & Living Showcase
is being heId in the centraI feature

with aII the Iatest innovations for saving money
and energy for each room in your home.

At the ldeal Home Exhibition in London

people come and go,

dreaming about new labour-saving devices,

new possibilities,

new designs for living.

It's a fantastic product.

OK. And then you Iean on it
and you get your French fries.

Not everything here is a design classic,

but everything here has been designed
to meet a need, fulfil a desire,

or simply to raise a cheer at the breakfast table.

The people who worry about this kind of stuff
are called designers.

They worry about stuff, not in general,
but in particular

the fine detail of stuff,

the stuff we build our lives from.

They worry about it, so that we don't have to.

Our mission,
our reason to be doing what we're doing,

is to make a...

make a better worId for the smaII things.

They're not scientists, they're not engineers.

They're certainIy not writers,

but they're doing work which is extremeIy criticaI
at the function of our society.

If design has got anything to offer us,

it ought to be that our reIationship to objects
becomes more thoughtfuI,

wiser, deeper, better considered.

You can be a pIumber or you can be a
journaIist, you can be a designer,

it's exactIy the same thing.

A cIear way for me to deserve to exist
is to serve.

You don't think about your toothbrush
being designed

untiI you put a badIy-designed toothbrush
in your mouth.

FIamenco

So where does design come from?

What does it mean to be a designer?

What is the special nature, the genius,
of this thing that we call design?

This series sets out to answer those questions,

and along the way will tell the story of the world
that the designers have made for us.

The world can be a hostile place
for us human beings.

But frail and fragile as we are,

we've managed to survive it,

and even thrive in it,

thanks to our innate skills as designers.

Starting from the simplest stone axe,

we've developed tools of
increasing sophistication

that offer a handle on the most
unpromising environment.

ln fact, our design skills have reached
such heights

that these day we even manufacture facsimiles
of environments

which were once all too real and threatening.

As for the modern city,

the sheer density of design here reaches
an almost organic level of complexity.

The modern city is a new kind of nature -

man-made nature.

lt reflects back an image of ourselves
through the things we have designed.

But, for the designer,
the world is not enough.

Plans for a new, improved version
are always on the drawing board.

I think designers aIways imagine

that something couId be better.

That whatever it is now,

rethinking, taking advantage of
new technoIogies of production,

aII of that, I think, drives them on to the idea
that they're making a better mousetrap.

This is a standard measuring cup,

but the key thing is, is that it's made to be
so that you can read it from above,

and it's resting on the tabIe top and it's stabIe.

How many of us, when you put a Iiquid
in a measuring cup, you have to then hoId it up.

And if it's a Iiquid, then it gets disturbed
and you can't quite teII.

And it's this kind of thing, by the way,
that I Iove about design,

because some of the probIems of the worId
are so difficuIt to soIve -

probIems of disease, of poverty.

My gosh, how we gonna soIve
those probIems?

And so it's inspirationaI to see somebody
actuaIIy soIve a probIem.

It's not a huge probIem in the worId,
but at Ieast it was soIved.

This is Dieter Rams.

ln a 50-year career, he can claim to have solved
his fair share of problems,

with products you may well have switched on
or washed up at some time or other.

lf you didn't notice them,
Rams would be pleased.

''Design, '' says Rams,
''should be as discreet as an English butler. ''

What I have in my mind
is to make the things more quieter.

That I aIways had in my mind.

Rams is in Tokyo to oversee the opening of
an exhibition dedicated to a lifetime's work,

and, as ever, to make sure things are just so.

You see...

this is more correct now.

He's also on hand to explain
his Ten Commandments,

as authoritative and compact as the original.

The first is that good design is innovative.

The second,
weII, good design makes a product usefuI.

And, of course,
the third is good design is aesthetic design.

Within the design worId there has Iong been
a controversy of whether a designer is an artist

or the designer is an engineer

or the designer is a servant
of the corporate worId.

For me, the designer is aII of those things.

They've got to worry about the economy
on the one hand and art on the other.

They're the nexus, they're the bridge,
they're the crossroads.

Good design is honest.

Honest.

What's a dishonest design?

Lying.

And ten, good design
is as IittIe design as possibIe.

That's what I Iike expressing.

But Rams is only one voice
in the world of design.

There are other gurus
following other commandments.

J Mays is Ford Motors'global Head of Design.

Oklahoma-born and London-based,

Mays is ultimately responsible for the look of
around 80 million Ford cars on the road today.

For me design is nothing more than
a communications tooI.

It is a way to bend the sheet metaI in such a way

that it communicates the vaIues of the brand
and puIIs the customers in,

makes them reach in their waIIet,
puII out the money and pay for the car.

And design is not an anaIyticaI process.

It's an emotionaI process.

I aIways say if you Iook at the customer,

go into the customer's home, as an exampIe,

and you wiII see who they are.

See that same customer driving around
in their car and that's who they want to be.

The probIem with peopIe-movers generaIIy,

is that I aIways think they Iook as though
they smeII Iike diapers.

It's essentiaIIy a very functionaI object.

So the goaI with this vehicIe back in about 2004,
when we started designing it,

was to introduce a new design Ianguage
into the Ford of Europe products,

and we caII that design Ianguage
''kinetic design''.

Now, kinetic design is a design Ianguage
that shouId visuaIIy communicate

the idea of the vehicIe reaIIy moving
even when it's standing stiII.

A Iot of peopIe ask me
if kinetic design has a function.

Yeah, the function of kinetic design
is to put a smiIe on your face.

However you define it,

whether you're from the Church of Rams
or the School of Mays,

we are now in the position of being able to take
good design more or less for granted.

Well designed, well made
and affordable products

have become the givens
of advanced capitalism...

along with democracy,
wireless lnternet access and skinny lattes.

But good design is the product of
a complex, rich history

in which the definition of design, and the role
and status of the designer, have changed,

as the tectonic plates of economics,
politics and society have shifted.

Capitalism, industrialisation,

mass production, miniaturisation,

new materials, new technologies,

consumerism, globalisation,

environmentalism,

war and peace, fads and fashion -

the design world has mirrored every move
we have made.

ln fact, the story of design offers an alternative
history of the modern world

told through stuff,

and the players in this version of history
aren't politicians or revolutionaries,

artists or philosophers,

they're the cups and chairs,
appliances and vehicles,

the tools, gadgets and gizmos of everyday life.

But before all that, there was this.

ln the story of design,
this is the Garden of Eden,

before industrialisation and mass production

divided the designing of things
from the making of things.

Before the lndustrial Revolution,
this is how stuff got made -

by craftsmen and women operating
out of small workshops,

turning out a limited range of products
in small runs.

Each piece could be made
broadly to the same design,

but each was a little bit different from its siblings,

the result of its own moment of creation,

the latest expression
of the workshop's collective skill.

Though you may be producing
dozens of pieces,

there's stiII an individuaIity to the pieces.

They don't need to be exactIy the same,

but as Iong as each one has a bit of a Iife,
has a fIavour, I suppose,

that's the important thing,

that each piece speaks.

Part of what the cIient, the customer is Iooking
for, is that essentiaI part of the maker,

and that's what they're buying reaIIy.

It's not just the object,

it's everything that's gone into the making
of that piece.

GIass can be a IittIe surprising at times,

so you think it's going to do one thing
and it does something sIightIy differentIy.

And peopIe can't reaIIy teII you what it wiII do,
you've got to feeI it

and you've got to be abIe to do it.

So you make an awfuI Iot of mistakes
before you get it right.

One of the differences between
the hand-made pot and the industriaI pot

is about truth to materiaIs.

The cIay has a Iife of its own
and so you have to be in sympathy with it.

As you get more practised at doing
different designs

then you get neater at them and neater at them.

So the first ones we did were quite scruffy

and then they got a bit better

but then they went a bit too neat,

so then we had to go back again

and make them Iook a bit more naturaIistic.

A design wiII evoIve,

both from the concept through the investigation
and deveIopment work.

But aIso once we start to make a design,

once we've decided on a combination
and a formuIa,

the pieces wiII evoIve.

That one's, I think, the most pIeasing so far.

Compared to the first of the series,
this one is much more generous.

It's a different pot.

It's designed to be far more open
and generous than the first one,

but I'm pIeased.

It's got some Iife,
it's got a bit of a spring to it.

It's got a coupIe of air bubbIes in it,
but hey-ho.

For industrial designers,

the hand and eye of the craftsman is both
an inspiration and a standard to aspire to.

My grandfather, he was a speciaIist in surface,
for pianos,

and I Iearnt from him to poIish by hand,

and his thumb was Iike his tooI, Iike a tooI,

much thicker than mine.

He was thinking not in mass products,

and that is what we have to think today too.

We have to change mass products
into quaIity products.

But controlling a multi-faceted
manufacturing process

is more challenging than throwing a pot
on a wheel.

Designing for industry
is based on a bold premise -

that the craftsmen's skills can be replicated by
a mechanical system

in which machines act like humans
and humans like machines.

What happens in a mass production system

is that the craftsmanship
is actuaIIy transferred from the peopIe

who are physicaIIy assembIing the product,
back up the chain

away from the mass of workers
who are actuaIIy doing the assembIing.

And the Iabour historians
actuaIIy have a word for it.

They caII it ''deskiIIing''.

It says we're gonna take the skiII away from
the majority of peopIe

and we're gonna invest it
in a smaIIer group of peopIe

who are either designing the systems
or making the machinery

that the mass of the peopIe are using.

Design was one of the more intriguing
by-products of the lndustrial Revolution,

along with consumerism, capitalism,
global warming

and two and a half centuries of social upheaval.

Design's godfathers were
the 1 8th-century entrepreneurs,

eager to find new ways of making more for less.

The Staffordshire potter
Josiah Wedgwood led the way,

exploiting new, machine-age
production methods,

some of which are still in use
at the Wedgwood factory today.

But keeping the customer satisfied also meant
seizing on the latest management thinking

about ways to organise,
train and exploit workers.

Central to the new thinking
was the idea of the ''division of labour''.

The Portland Vase, one of Wedgwood's
most celebrated technical achievements,

is still made today using the same system.

I'm a prestige figure maker.

- Figure maker?
- Yeah.

27 years, yeah, straight from schooI at 1 5.

I've fiIIed the pIaster mouId with cIay

and now I'm just going to scrape
the excess cIay off,

so that you end up with just the figure
in the mouId.

When I finaIIy get the figure out,
it goes to the ornamenter to be ornamented.

So someone eIse puts the figure on the vase?

Yeah, the ornamenter.

The trickiest part is
when I'm actuaIIy getting the figure out,

some peopIe caII the tooI I actuaIIy use
a spatuIa,

but aII the girIs who've ever done this job,
this is a waddIer.

- A waddIy?
- A waddIer.

Because we waddIe Iike a duck.

There's 1 8 figures on the PortIand Vase,

and these are the same figures,
I think, from when Josiah started.

You're on first name terms with Josiah, are you?

Of course. I've earned it, 27 years.

One of the other specialisations created by
the division of labour

was the individual who would one day become
known as ''the designer'',

but who in Wedgwood's day
usually went under the label ''artist''.

But whatever they were called,

in the new era of industrial production,

they were the ones responsible for
creating the original designs

from which all subsequent copies
would be made.

Today, at the Portmeirion Pottery
in Stoke-on-Trent,

the chief designer is Julian Teed.

He learned much of his craft
from the late Susan Williams-Ellis,

Portmeirion's owner, designer
and enduring inspiration.

She wouId spend hours and hours drawing.

She wouId go to bed with a sketchbook.

This is an exampIe of the sketchbook.

She was a proIific sketcher.

She wouId sit up aII night drawing.

No need for computers with Susan,
I can teII you.

And then I'd come into work the next day

and she'd say,
''JuIian, come and have breakfast with me.''

And we'd go through and sit out in the garden,
especiaIIy in the summer, fantastic.

Such an experience for me.

She'd show me aII these drawings that
she'd done at three o'cIock in the morning.

Julian is working with modeller Mark Castry,

to create a commemorative mug based on one
of Susan's original designs from the 1 960s.

The modeller makes a master pattern in plaster

which will, in turn, be used to make
the production moulds

from which the mugs themselves will be made.

Every industrially-manufactured product,

from a paperclip to an Airbus,

has to go through this ''tooling up'' process

an act of faith on the part of the manufacturers.

There's a Iot of upfront cost
with industriaI design.

The product designers are carrying, in effect,
this Ioad with them

of a corporation that's gonna make the stuff,

of factories that are gonna produce it,

of peopIe who are gonna finance it,

of marketers who have a strategy to produce it.

UnIess the designer is attuned to
aII of those things, it won't happen.

So it's not a casuaI activity.

And I think designers, good designers,
know aII that,

and strive to hit the sweet spot
that wiII satisfy aII these diverse eIements.

For the industrial product,
this is the moment of creation.

The chance to get everything right
before the production line starts to roll.

What we have here is Mark
modeIIing directIy back into the pIaster.

As you can see it's a very skiIIed,
detaiIed and fine job

and what he's putting into this mug now
is his souI.

It's going in right now,
you're watching it as he's scratching it in,

and it'II stay there for ever.

So when you go into the shop
and buy a mug for �1 2,

that has got a part of Susan,
a part of Mark, a part of me.

That's the passion of pottery.

And pottery is about passion,
there's no doubt about it.

We're making pots out of mud,

that's what we're doing at the end of the day.

We're digging mud out of the ground
and we're putting it through fIames.

And to do that with reaI passion,
you need peopIe.

You can't do it just with machines.

Mass production complicated ideas
about beauty.

Show the average Romantic poet a Grecian urn,

or even one of the imitation urns
turned out by the Wedgwood factory,

and he would tell you that
''beauty is truth, truth beauty''.

But what about the beauty of a bridge
made of iron?

The lron Bridge in Coalbrookdale is an early
testament to the beauty of the machine-made,

and the truth of the mass produced.

The modern age of industrialisation
was allowed to speak through the lron Bridge,

with its own distinctive voice.

The lron Bridge had its origins with another
1 8th-century entrepreneur, Abraham Darby.

Unlike Wedgwood, he worked with molten iron
rather than pliable clay.

ln the early 1 8th century,
he invented a new way of casting iron

using multiple moulds
made out of sticky green sand.

The simple brilliance of Darby's method

was that once the iron cooled,
the moulds could be broken,

the product removed, and the sand remoulded
from a master pattern.

This is aII reaIIy advanced sand castIe buiIding,
but for an industry.

And the point being that once you've invested in
your pattern,

you can use that again and again
to make your mouIds.

It doesn't matter that the mouIds get destroyed,
cos you can reuse the sand.

It's onIy sand.
But the vaIue is in the pattern.

The top seller from Darby's
Coalbrookdale lron Works was this.

Quaker-plain, functional and durable,

the Darby cooking pot came in a variety of sizes,

and any colour you wanted...
so long as it was black.

The significance of aII this is...

This is reaIIy one of the first

mass-produced industriaI objects.

There's a IoveIy bit in Darby's patent
which says that:

He's got a better method of casting pots

and this wiII be of great benefit
to the poor of the kingdom.

In other words, there's a Iot of the poor
and I can seII a Iot of them.

You couId say Darby was the designer.

It's a cIassic one where coming up with
the process, the manufacturing process,

has had a powerfuI infIuence on the design.

And it's such a beautifuIIy simpIe thing.

The onIy reaI bit of decoration on it
are those two Iines there

and the fact that they haven't gone straight up
with this, it's got a IoveIy curve on it,

and it's so simpIe.

But the appreciation of the aesthetics
of mass production did not come naturally,

particularly in the birthplace
of the lndustrial Revolution.

ln Victorian Britain, as the machine age
advanced, public tastes retreated.

The transformation of the country
by industrial capitalism

would take place behind a Gothic facade,

barnacled with knights, damsels
and heraldic beasts.

For William Morris, the most celebrated
and influential designer of the 1 9th century,

machines were at best a threat,
at worst a menace.

He wasn't against machines per se,

because he couId see that machines couId,

if they were properIy reguIated,

they couId make Iife better for peopIe.

But he couIdn't bear the thought of this beauty
being achieved at the expense of the peopIe

who were producing
in these inhumane conditions,

and that a beautifuI object reaIIy must be made
in beautifuI surroundings

by peopIe who are Iiving reasonabIe Iives,

Iives with some pIeasure in them.

Not the kind of Iives that a Iot of peopIe
in Victorian EngIand

were being forced to Iive and work in.

Morris's response to the unacceptable face
of industrialisation

was to plan a route back to the Garden of Eden

by relearning craft skills
that the machine was replacing.

Morris had an aImost instinctive need
to Iearn: how do you print a textiIe?

How do you dye cIoth the coIour
that you absoIuteIy want it?

How do you weave a tapestry?

And he set himseIf the task, reaIIy, of Iearning,

of mastering aII these processes,

beIieving that that was an important part
of a designer's roIe, in a way.

And this, of course, is why Morris is so important
in reIation to the Arts and Crafts movement.

He's important as a designer,
as a reforming designer,

but, at the same time,
he is this towering craftsman

and he's an inspiration to the next generation

who equaIIy see a different way of designing

and making objects
in a smaIIer workshop environment.

ln the National Archives in Kew it's possible to
see today what Morris was taking on

when he pitted his hand-crafted designs against
the best that the machine age could offer.

The Design Registers were set up in 1 839

to allow manufacturers to seek
copyright protection for their designs.

That's extraordinary.

The volumes covering ceramics or metalwork
contain sketches or photographs,

but the textile registers contain actual samples,

cut from the original bolts of cloth.

Hidden away from the light of day,
these are the X-Files of Victorian taste.

This is what was in the market.

This is everything that came.

This is what peopIe sent in.
This is what peopIe were registering.

What strikes me is it just gives you immediateIy,

just for the sheer weight and voIume,

gives you an idea of British output
at the time, manufacturing.

Somewhere buried in this volume,

which coversjust a few months
of the year 1 883,

are designs by Morris and Company.

I think WiIIiam Morris was the greatest pattern
designer probabIy that the worId's ever seen

and his patterns are reaIIy
instantIy recognisabIe.

Morris was a genius at simpIification,

and he took patterns from nature

and he made them into
these wonderfuI imaginative,

quite formaIised, but very simpIe, patterns,

very unIike anything that was around
at that particuIar period in Victorian design.

Ah, now Iook.

Here we are on a quite different IeveI.

We have, interestingIy, here
on this Morris & Company textiIe...

In fact, we even have on the seIvage,
you can see Morris & Company just beginning,

and then the taiI end ''of Oxford Street'' here.

And there's a coupIe of things
that jump out at me.

One is the pattern.

It's organised in such a very tight,
controIIed and sophisticated way

that you're immediateIy drawn to it
as something different.

It's quite different from -
if I may just turn the page over -

from the exoticism that we generaIIy see,

in which certain basic forms are taken
and then repeated ad infinitum.

The other thing that's different is the coIour,

because we've seen some very bright coIours

and some pretty obvious coIours,

chemicaI dyes and so on,
used in their manufacture,

but here it's cIear that
it's something a IittIe more naturaI.

So here he is, amongst aII the huge
manufactories of the MidIands and so on,

competing and showing his own.

ExtraordinariIy, he's come up with
something quite different

and is offering it to the market.

But though Morris could hold his own on quality,

when it came to price, his hand-made,
labour-intensive products

put him at a disadvantage
to the machine-made competition.

Morris did try to make things
in an economicaI way

but he was aIways up against the probIem of
wanting the tremendous quaIity.

And how do you soIve the probIem?

It's the probIem that's been besetting design
ever since.

He never reaIIy soIved the probIem,

and he got into terribIe torments and rages
about it,

and said, ''I'm spending my Iife
ministering to the swinish Iuxury of the rich.''

Design is a servant to capitaIism.

I think that's something that I accepted
many years ago.

But design can never be a pure activity

because it's aIways connected with
how things are bought,

how things are soId,

how things are used,
how things are thrown away or recycIed.

AII of these different aspects
of how consumption operates

need to be acknowIedged, understood,
and sometimes manipuIated,

so that you can create beautifuI, resoIute,
astounding pieces of work.

By the closing decades of the 1 9th century,

the techniques of industrial manufacturing
had become widely established,

particularly in America,

where everything from sewing machines
to bicycles

were being produced to the same formula.

Standardised parts made by special tools,

assembled by semi or unskilled workers
to a uniform design.

lt become known as ''the American System'',

and Josiah Wedgwood
would surely have approved.

But mass production, in the full modern sense
of the phrase, had yet to be realised.

lndustrialisation's promise and capitalism's
dream was of identical products by the million,

whose unit cost fell magically
as volumes increased.

Mass production meant the reIentIess
production of the same thing,

in sufficient numbers,
not onIy to make it universaIIy avaiIabIe,

but to make it universaIIy affordabIe as weII.

This dream and this promise would find
their first and their ultimate expression

in a product that has transformed our lives
and our world, for good and ill.

There are three great significant
20th-century art forms, I think.

One is the movies, the second is rock music,

the third is industriaI design

of which the automobiIe is the paradigm.

I can't think of anything better than seeing a car
that I've worked on drive down the street,

and I aIways Iook to see who's in it,

and I aIways Iook to see if it's the person
that I imagined that shouId be driving that car.

And it doesn't matter if it's the smaIIest
or the most expensive car,

doesn't matter if it's a sports car or an SUV,

it doesn't matter if it's a V8 or an eIectric car,

there's a car out there for everyone.

The idea of a car for everyone came early on.

But the first time around,
it was the same car for everyone.

And, like Abraham Darby's cooking pot
two centuries earlier,

it was any colour you wanted...

so long as it was black.

Henry Ford didn't invent the automobiIe,

but he invented a way to get it to the most
possibIe peopIe at a great affordabIe price.

Henry Ford said he never spoke
to his customers.

He said if he asked his customers what
they wanted, they'd just say faster horses.

He had a better idea
in how to make a faster horse.

The ModeI T was essentiaIIy a wagon

that had the horses in the form of an engine
under the seat.

And it compIeteIy transforms the way peopIe
think about moving from point A to point B,

and that was probabIy the biggest thing
that Henry Ford brought to society,

was the idea of freedom.

The story of the Model Tbegins here,
on Piquette Avenue in Detroit.

Who designed the ModeI T?

The cIear vision for the ModeI T,

weII, what it ought to be was Henry Ford's,

and he wanted a car that was Iight and simpIe
and inexpensive to manufacture,

and inexpensive to operate.

But in detaiI he worked with a number of peopIe

who IiteraIIy sat down in a room
and Iocked the door,

and inside they worked the design out together.

I don't think anybody working on the
ModeI T Ford caIIed himseIf a designer.

When technoIogies are new
they don't need to be designed.

The technoIogy in itseIf was so utterIy,
utterIy intoxicatingIy wonderfuI.

When Henry Ford Iooked at a ModeI T,

he, in essence, saw through the body
and he saw this chassis,

and he knew aII the ingenuity that had been
designed into it, and he appreciated it.

To him it was beautifuI.

The body design was a bit of an afterthought.

It was necessary - obviousIy you had to have
a body and you had to have seats,

but it was never very high on Henry Ford's Iist.

A hundred years on
from the birth of the Model T,

and car design remains a game of two halves -

the body and the chassis.

Not only are they made separately,
they're also conceived separately.

The product of two different mindsets

design and engineering.

Wedgwood and Darby,
Venus and Mars.

It is a given that we want to be best in cIass
in terms of fueI efficiency, in terms of quaIity,

in terms of safety.

My roIe is very different.
I'm the adoIescent in the room.

I'm the guy that says how are we going to create
a thriIIing product for the customer

so that once aII those functionaI requirements
have been met

we've actuaIIy wrapped that aII
in this unbeIievabIy attractive package

that wants to bring that customer
into our showroom?

For designers, the chassis is ''the platform''

which exists to support their designs.

For engineers, design is ''styling'',

sometimes pronounced ''packaging''.

The moment on the production line when
chassis and body meet is called the ''marriage''.

And, like many marriages, the outward show
of unity often masks tensions

that led up to the wedding day.

It used to be, maybe in the '60s and '70s,

that engineers fancied themseIves
as the guys that buiIt the cars

and the designers wouId come in
and make them kind of Iook nice at the end.

So our job was reaIIy to come in
and make the engineering Iess ugIy.

I suppose if you reaIIy dig down in
organisations,

there's aIways an engineer that thinks that their
piece of the automobiIe is the most important.

As Iong as they understand at the end of the day
that that's wrong, then I'm happy.

But the Model Tis about more than the design
of an individual car.

Ford's towering achievement
was to design a means of production

that would literally change the world.

They found that they couId seII
aII they couId make.

Henry Ford's goaI, however,
was to make aII he couId seII.

And so they essentiaIIy, basicaIIy,
froze the design of the car

and then they went after the production process.

Ford set out to do for cars what Wedgwood
had done with teapots and tureens,

but he went further than any industrialist
had ever gone before.

They said instead of having one guy at a bench
make a whoIe transmission:

What if we have severaI guys at a bench

and each one does a IittIe thing
on the transmission

and then shoves it down the bench
to the next guy?

And then they said:
''WeII, that worked better, Iet's try the engine,

Iet's try the rear axIe, Iet's try the front axIe.''

They were groping their way towards
the assembIy Iine.

And, eventuaIIy, it became IogicaI to say:
''What about assembIing the whoIe car?''

So, by the end of 1 91 3, they actuaIIy had
three fuII-bIown assembIy Iines,

paraIIeI Iines cranking out ModeI Ts.

When those first ones were buiIt,
which were buiIt conventionaIIy,

it took tweIve and haIf man hours
to make a singIe car.

By the time mass production
was fuIIy impIemented,

it took 93 minutes to make a singIe car.

In today's fragmented car market,
where you've got aII these different choices,

it's hard for us to understand that,

at its peak, virtuaIIy haIf of the automobiIes
in the worId

were ModeI T Fords.

But there was a fatal flaw with the Ford System.

lt had become too good
at what it was designed to do.

They weren't making cars in any generaI way,

they were making this very specific product

and the machines that they designed
were so speciaIised

that they were onIy good for making parts
for ModeI Ts.

And Ford became Iess an automobiIe company

than a ModeI T company.

GeneraI Motors and ChrysIer reaIised in
the 1 920s that that's what you needed to do.

You needed to re-styIe

and you needed to make significant changes to
the appearance of vehicIes

and occasionaIIy to the functionaI eIements
of vehicIes

in order to make them continuousIy attractive.

Otherwise, obviousIy the end game
wouId be that everybody wouId own a car

and nobody wouId need to repIace it.

You have to make an object not onIy desirabIe
to buy, but desirabIe to repIace as weII.

But what happens in a consumer society,
as soon as you estabIish that baseIine,

somebody says: ''Can I have a IittIe more?

Can I have a IittIe more comfort,
a IittIe more speed, a IittIe more styIe,

coIours maybe?''

SuddenIy, at that point is when design was born,

because we had answered
the functionaI attributes

of moving the customer from point A to point B

and now we were offering the customer a choice
of how to go from point A to point B,

and then you couId make the car more attractive
through coIours,

through different materiaIs,
and then eventuaIIy through different shapes,

and that started to create the design industry
as we know it.

Falling sales of the Model T
forced Ford to halt production in 1 927,

and to set about designing this year's model,
the Model A.

But Ford's reluctance to return to
the drawing board

cost his company millions of dollars
in lost production

and its place as the dominant player
in the car market.

He had learned the hard way

a fundamental truth about the consumer society
that was coming into being.

We, the people, are not content with iron pots.

We want Wedgwood vases, too.

My sense is that he thought that this was
not onIy aII the car you wouId ever need;

it's aII the car you shouId ever want.

And so, ironicaIIy, the guy who set this whoIe
20th-century consumer cuIture,

did so much to set it in motion,

found himseIf increasingIy aIienated from it.

And hanging on to the ModeI T
was his way of saying: ''SIow down!''

But it was fruitIess. He couIdn't sIow it down.

Today, we live in a post-Ford world,

a world in which potters design on computers

and print out their pots in 3D.

A world in which mass production
has been replaced by mass customisation,

and the buzz-phrase is the ''market of one''.

A world in which our appetite for stuff
has become a problem

we'd rather not think about too much.

But however our stuff is designed and made
and disposed of,

it remains a designed world

made by us and for us,

overseen by designers who will continue to
worry about the way things are,

and how to make them just a little bit better.

I don't want to make a new chair

because I beIieve that there are enough chairs.

What is aIways interesting is to find a soIution
which has some new things on it.

For exampIe, you need a soIution for soft fIoors,
hard fIoors, and wheeIs.

Three important things.

But no chair has aII these three.
I know.

OK, Iet me think about that.

Now I'm stiII thinking. Yes.