Una riflessione sul design tra continuità, discontinuità, evoluzione e permanenze

Starting from the late sixties era of youth cultural rebellion, the text relates forty years of products have forged a new way of interacting with the expectations of an ever changing society. In this society, social issues and modern distribution systems merged and constantly changed means of distributing and marketing goods. From that era on, the shifting nature of these systems, tied to changing fashion and customs, forced us to dramatically change the basic tenets of making design. The solid functional, formal and economic mainstays of good design in the fifties gave way to an endless succession of changing methods and moved away from classic formal models. This brought about new brand concepts, as well as new lines of design investigation by individual designers and new group of designers. The divergences and mixing of cultures, the poetic use of technology, the design of events, the rise and fall of specialized design, political design and everyday design, the development of globalization and the “glocal”, new environmental awareness, the design of interface and the virtual; these are just a few of the issues that over the years have influenced the development of the formal and psychological aspect of contemporary products. They have informed a heterogeneous collection of new products and new style, defined by some pieces, which in their changeability, have became history-defining symbol and others that have become gadgets, passing fads.