In the course of The Journey Matters, Jonathan Glancey imagines travelling from the early 1930s to the turn of the century on some of what he considers to be the most truly glamorous and romantic trips he has ever dreamed of or made in real life.
On a trip on The Hiawatha Express in the late 30’s he meets Henry Dreyfus an industrial design pioneer, who designed the streamlined locomotives for the New York Central’s 20th Century Limited as well as some of the most iconic devices found in American homes and offices throughout the twentieth century, including the Hoover Model 150 vacuum cleaner, the Western Electric Model 500 telephone, the Westclox Big Ben alarm clock, the John Deere Model A tractor and the Honeywell round thermostat.
Glancey imagines asking Dreyfuss what good design is all about:
‘I wrote this down for our New York studio,’ he says, reading from his pocket diary. ‘We bear in mind that the object we are working on is going to be ridden in, sat upon, looked at, talked into, activated, operated, or in some other way used by people… When the point of contact between the product and the people becomes a point of friction, then the industrial designer has failed. On the other hand, if people are made safer, more comfortable, more eager to purchase, more efficient – or just plain happier – by contact with the product, then the designer has succeeded.’
I believe that you should paste this paragraph up on your wall whenever you are about to come up with a new product or service. Remember it well!
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