Objectified: Form and Content

This past week I watched the documentary film Objectified, a film focusing on design and how designers work. A good portion of the film was focused on the idea of "form and content". An important distinction between most designers and artists is that designers are often commissioned to work within parameters to come up with a product. It is this intersection of form and content that the real issues of design start to form. Form and content is the difference between, essentially, functionality and artistic design. A designer may be asked to design an object, and this object has to look a certain way. In this example their parameters are more focused on form (what the object will look like) rather than specific functions. The other way of thinking is that a designer may be asked to design something with very specific functions (content) and the form (artistic design) follows that. I think of my MacBook computer, a machine that is designed for content but has a very effectively designed form around those parameters. An example from the film was the Japanese toothpick that had a perforated end that acted as a signifier of use and as a stand for the toothpick. In that case form followed content, as the designer had a specific goal (a toothpick with the function of a stand) and had to figure out how to form it to those parameters. Form and content, one usually follows the other.