Product Design

Product design is the process of creating a new product to be sold by a business to its customers. A very broad concept, it is essentially the efficient and effective generation and development of ideas through a process that leads to new products.
In a systematic approach, product designers conceptualize and evaluate ideas, turning them into tangible inventions and products. 
The product designer's role is to combine art, science, and technology to create new products that other people can use. Their evolving role has been facilitated by digital tools that now allow designers to communicate, visualize, analyze and actually produce tangible ideas in a way that would have taken greater manpower in the past.

Design expression comes from the combined effect of all elements in a product. Colour tone, shape and size should direct a person's thoughts towards buying the product.Therefore it is in the product designer's best interest to consider the audiences who are most likely to be the product's end consumers. Keeping in mind how consumers will perceive the product during the design process will direct towards the product’s success in the market. However, even within a specific audience, it is challenging to cater to each possible personality within that group.The solution to that is to create a product that, in its designed appearance and function, expresses a personality or tells a story. Products that carry such attributes are more likely to give off a stronger expression that will attract more consumers. On that note it is important to keep in mind that design expression does not only concern the appearance of a product, but also its function. For example, as humans our appearance as well as our actions are subject to people's judgment when they are making a first impression of us. People usually do not appreciate a rude person even if they are good looking. Similarly, a product can have an attractive appearance but if its function does not follow through it will most likely drop in regards to consumer interest. In this sense, designers are like communicators, they use the language of different elements in the product to express something.

Product designers need to consider all of the details: the ways people use and abuse objects, faulty products, errors made in the design process, and the desirable ways in which people wish they could use objects. Many new designs will fail and many won't even make it to market. Some designs eventually become obsolete. The design process itself can be quite frustrating usually taking 5 or 6 tries to get the product design right. A product that fails in the marketplace the first time may be re-introduced to the market 2 more times. If it continues to fail, the product is then considered to be dead because the market believes it to be a failure. Most new products fail, even if it's a great idea. All types of product design are clearly linked to the economic health of manufacturing sectors. Innovation provides much of the competitive impetus for the development of new products, with new technology often requiring a new design interpretation.

Philippe Strack

Philippe Starck is a French product designer and interior designer, born 18 January 1949 in Paris. He is equally well known as an interior designer, a designer of consumer goods, and for his industrial design and his architectural creations. Philippe Starck started his career in the 1980s.

Starck studied at the Ecole Camondo in Paris. An inflatable structure he imagined in 1969 was a first incursion into questions of materiality, and an early indicator of Starck's interest in where and how people live. Starck's iconoclastic designs brought him to the attention of Pierre Cardin who offered him a job as artistic director of his publishing house.
At the same time, Starck set up his first industrial design company, Starck Product - which he later renamed Ubik and began working with manufacturers in Italy and internationally. His concept of democratic design led him to focus on mass-produced consumer goods rather than one-off pieces, seeking ways to reduce cost and improve quality in mass-market goods.
Starck's prolific output expanded to include furniture, decoration, architecture, street furniture, industry (wind turbines, photo booths), bathroom fittings, kitchens, floor and wall coverings, lighting, domestic appliances, office equipment such as staplers, utensils (including a juice squeezer and a toothbrush), tableware, clothing, accessories (shoes, eyewear, luggage, watches) toys, glassware (perfume bottles, mirrors), graphic design and publishing, even food (Panzani pasta, Lenotre Yule log), and vehicles for land, sea, air and space (bikes, motorbikes, yachts, planes). 
For the past thirty years Philippe Starck has been designing hotels all over the world, including the Royalton in New York in 1988, the Delano in Miami in 1995, the Mondrian in Los Angeles, the St Martin's Lane in London in 1999, and the Sanderson, also in London, in 2000. In South America, Philippe Starck designed the inside and outside of the Hotel Fasano in Rio de Janeiro in 2007 using materials such as wood, glass and marble. He then turned his attention to luxury hotels: in 2008, Le Meurice and the Royal Monceau in 2010.



Through his "democratic design" concept, Starck campaigns for well-designed, quality objects that are not just reserved for an elite. He would put this utopian idea into practice by increasing production quantities to cut costs and by using mail-order.