creates rather different approaches or mind-sets. Engineering is primarily taught as a science,
industrial design is primarily taught as an art. The philosophical underpinnings are fairly
diametrically opposed. One commentator has described the education of engineers as
“educating scientists to research into engineering problems”. He would rather see engineering
as; “concerned with the design of artefacts”. However, the split is sufficiently tangible that
companies and their managers must manage the differences between the two, if they are to
ensure good outcomes.
An understanding of the first use of industrial design in relation to modern manufacturing is
useful, because we can then see how this specialism came into being. While the educational
philosophy that underpins industrial design is in essence German, developed at the Bauhaus
School in the early 1920’s. The practice of industrial design grew in response to a commercial
problem faced by US companies in the 30’s. An article in the February 1934 Fortune
magazine illustrates this well:
“As a phenomenon, the industrial designer, came into being as mass production raised output
to where one after another, industries hitherto without benefit of other engineering design
found their products matched by other manufacturers and the market consequently glutted”
In effect then the success of industrial design was predicated on its ability to help a
manufacturer differentiate his product when the technology was no longer novel. And it
created a form of product and market innovation previously unknown.
2. Industrial Design and Innovation
Industrial Design is therefore a part of innovation. It makes its most significant contribution,
as indicated above, in differentiation of similar products either by making them appear very
different through colour and style, or by enhancing them with detail and minor additional
features. In more radical innovation where new technology is involved, industrial design