Objectified

Henry Ford once said that "every object tells a story, if you know how to read it." The movie, Objectified, depicts both content and form of its objects very personally and openly by showing close-ups of many common industrial-designed objects that most people don't fathom as having had a part of the design process, because they are simply "there." The content and the form in these objects are so obvious and unified that the design is seamlessly tied in to make the functionality of the object aesthetically pleasing, and the aesthetic sense in synchronicity with the functionality. Andrew Blauvelt discusses how the toothpick, a very common item has not only been designed in specific ways, but how many objects, including the toothpick have evolved.

In the creation of a handle for common household tools, like a peeler, or shears, both content and form come into play, as the purpose of the handle it to design for ease of use and mobility and the form is an extension of that purpose. Putting great design into everyday things helps people improve the way they live their lives, without forcing them to notice the great design, because it is so natural.

Dieter Rams speaks in Objectified about how great design must be both clear and understandable, allowing users to trust the designed object quickly. He discusses that good design is: innovative, aesthetic, honest, unobtrusive, long-lived, consistent in every detail, environmentally friendly, makes products both understandable and useful, and is as little design as possible.

Alice Rawsthorn talks about how nowadays, we have so many designs where the form has no relation to the function of the object. She argues that, because of the microchip, design is shifting from the tangible and material form in connection to the content, to an increasingly intangible and immaterial form that is very loosely connected with the content, which poses more tensions and conflicts within design. As designers, we are primarily used to working in constraints, and with the constraints freed by the invention of the microchip, the designer is more free to explore other avenues of great design, however now has more conflicts and tensions as to how to explore these other forms in terms of scale, shapes, and user-interactivity, while keeping the product and the design well-suited for the user, and for its own purpose.

Three phases of modern design are discussed by Andrew Blauvelt: the formal relationship of the object, the symbolism and content or the purpose of the object, and looking at design contextually, looking at the human-object relationship. These are the different ways that form interacts with content in objects, as shown in Objectified. Even the film's form of showing close-up, personal stills of objects interacts with the content of the objects, showing their most clear and definite essence, and how the form is shaped to display the content in a functional way, not just for the form, or the object, but for the human using the object as well.