Word: chromed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
William Blake saw the world's wonders in a grain of sand. Victor Papanek sees its iniquities in a chrome-plated marmalade guard for toast. Dean of the design school at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Papanek argues his view in a controversial new book, Design for the Real World (Pantheon; $8.95), which blames industrial designers for almost every variety of pollution and waste...
...layman, these designers may seem innocuous people who spend their time adding chrome strips to auto bodies, streamlining fountain pens, creating bright new packages. But Papanek indicts his own colleagues for forgetting the context of their innovative work. Since they occupy a key position in the transformation of an idea into a product, he says, designers could insist on manufacturing processes that do not damage the environment. Instead, he charges, their primary aim is to increase sales through wasteful changes in style. They also clutter the market with basically useless products -electrically heated footstools, ballpoint pens crowned with plastic orchids...
...cars, fire trucks and long expanses of shiny kitchenware. The average result is an almost unimaginably stupid and passive materialism-the boredom of Warhol's silk-screened photos without their threat and bite. Thus, confronted for the nth time with another perfect rendering of reflections on the chrome gizzard of a Harley-Davidson or the pastille skin of a Volkswagen, one is apt to recall Truman Capote's sneer (about another medium) that "this isn't writing, it's typing...
...bred content in some of our readers. One subscriber wrote: "Outraged betrayed, I went dejectedly off to bed last night. My brooding thoughts: Whistler's Mother with eyebrows plucked, lips rouged and fingernails enameled a brilliant scarlet, the legs of a fine old Chippendale piece replaced with chrome." This week we present another modernization of design. Before readers give us their reactions, brooding or otherwise, I thought I would explain why we considered the renovation important...
Rouge on venerable cheeks? Chrome instead of hallowed woodwork? We think not. To us, the changes are functional as well as aesthetic. They keep the looks of TIME current with its spirit, which was never antique...