Design Economies and the Changing World Economy by Bryson John R.;Rusten Grete;

Author:Bryson, John R.;Rusten, Grete;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2011-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

Sloan’s design- and marketing-led innovation was to produce a car in every price range and for every purpose. This was a strategy based around developing different products for different market segments. Sloan’s strategy led to a proliferation of new models, and Earl introduced the concept of annual model changes based on colour, extravagant detailing and styling, and accessories. All this was about product differentiation. At the same time, du Pont’s developments in paint technology enabled General Motors to produce cars in a range of colours. Ford’s much cited claim that a customer could buy a Model T in any colour as long as it was black was a restriction founded upon paint technology – at that time black paint dried at a faster rate than other colours and this enabled Ford to maintain and increase the speed of his assembly line.

Earl introduced another important design innovation to the automotive product development cycle. This was the recruitment of women industrial designers from 1943. These designers concentrated on the design of car interiors – controls, fabrics and colours – but were also deployed by General Motors to design consumer appliances. During the 1950s, General Motors was employing so many female designers that journalists began to label them as the ‘Damsels of Design’. This group played an important role in establishing women in the profession of industrial design. The ‘Damsels’ were deployed in the company’s advertising, often appearing on television and giving public lectures. Earl noted that the ‘Damsels’ were ‘tuned specifically to the women driver’s problems … strong advocates of the six-way seat for greater comfort and visibility … always on the lookout for anything in cars that might snag their nylons’ (Earl quoted in Howard and Setliff, 2000: 282). The difficulty was that the Damsels were always identified as ‘female designers’ rather than just as ‘designers’. Earl promoted female designers within General Motors, but on his retirement they lapsed back into obscurity.

General Motor’s introduction of annual model changes based on design transformed the automotive industry. It was also a transformation that was copied by manufacturers of consumer products. For the automotive industry annual design-based alterations meant that:

in practice then, a business once ruled by engineering took on the trappings of the dressmaker’s salon, the notion of the obsolescence of a serviceable product was transferred from the clothing of the upper class to the single most important industrial product in America.

(Marling, 1989: 7)

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