The medicalization of life continues apace. Click here. This is the kind of design I hate. Take a minor concern that can be addressed with a shower, develop a new formula for an old fungicide, get a patent, tell men to be self-conscious, have them rub chemicals on their junk, and make money. Did you notice that this stuff may damage latex condoms and diaphragms? You should not be allowed to simultaneously prey on people’s ignorance to induce purchasing and assume they will be wise and responsible product users. Society played this game already. Women started douching in the 1600s. We now know it to be dangerous, resulting in irritation, inflammation, and infection. How long before we realize this is a bad idea? What percent of design does more harm than good?
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"There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them...Never before have grown men sat down and seriously designed electric hairbrushes, rhinestone-covered shoe horns, and mink carpeting for bathrooms, and then drawn up elaborate plans to make and sell these gadgets to millions of people. Before (in the "good old days"), if a person liked killing people, he had to become a general, purchase a coal mine, or else study nuclear physics. Today, industrial design has put murder on a mass-production basis...by creating whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that pollute the air we breath, designers have become a dangerous breed...this demands high social and moral responsibility from the designer."
-Victor Papanek, "Design for the Real World"
Okay yes, I admit this is very doom and gloom but there is a lot of truth to it. And as new and young designers I think we all need a reminder that our profession has the ability to affect the world on a vast level that most professions do not. We have a responsibility to our communities to take all of this into consideration when we design.
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