Louis Sullivan, employer and mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, wrote in 1896 that, “form ever follows function.” Revised to “form follows function,” this was the banner the early modernists fought under. As a notion and an epigram, it entered the popular lexicon and is still often used, even by non-designers. But what does it mean and what is its relevance today when the use of many of our objects is dictated by their invisible computer components? Designers are always making form decisions (That’s a big part of what we do.) and others involved in the production of goods make them as well. On what basis do we actually do this?

Form following function is easy to understand when we think of an object such as a hammer. It has a handle that is easily grasped both literally and conceptually, and a heavy, durable end with a flattened face. Its utility as an object to facilitate hitting is obvious. No instruction manual is necessary. We might even say its function follows its form.

The clarity of the form of tools was often used by modernist theorists to illustrate their aesthetic. As well, those objects that move through fluids, like propellors and aircraft wings, cannot be encumbered by decorative features. Their form, in a minimalist expression, was critical to their function.

But what about furniture? To fulfill the function of a table, a flat surface is required, parallel to the floor and some distance above it. There are innumerable ways of achieving this, and in many of them, form is dictated only by the preference of the designer. Is a round steel tuber  eally a better description  of function that a miniature, wooden, Doric column? Obviously not. It has become appar­ ent that often the form of what we (as a culture) make, is determined by many factors of which function may be only one.

A recently popular book, responding to the poverty of “form follows func­tion,” just as I have, proposed that “form follows feeling.” This strikes me as accurate, but not particularly clarifying. Often when I press my students for an explanation of why they have made things as they have, they say it’s because they “liked it” that way. Although unassa ilably ac­ curate as a description, it is not a very rigorous accounting. And since I believe  that  the  best  results  are usually intentional, not accidental, I press them and myself for a more thoughtful an­swer. What follows is a number of specific possibilities:

Geometry

For reasons as variable as cost and intellectual laziness, geometry is often a default in form-mak­ ing decisions.

Cost

Price is rarely not an issue, and form decisions are often dictated by the least expensive approach.

Material

The form that makes sense in one material may not in another. The pre-formed op­tions of steel dictate a very different appearance of rough lumber.

Theory

The Martini theory I proposed in an earlier column is another approach to form decisions.

Style

Whether we realize it or not, much of the form of our environment is determined by prevailing styles. We usu­ ally can only identify them in hindsight. For example, itsi easy to date photographs by such things as tie widths and collar heights.

Systems

One approach to design is that of developing a number of components that can be assembled in different combina­ tions, yielding many different solutions. The resulting forms are determined by that of their components.

Habit, and/or expedience

Much of what we do is only nominally thoughtful. We take the path of least (mental) resistance in form as we do in many other things.       •

Family values

It is often a benefit to marketing that a group of objects look as though they are related, such as bedroom suites, and dining room sets.

Metaphor

Sometimes objects are made to look like other objects or plants or animals, to suggest a function or to appeal to a sentiment.

Aesthetics

When I was in the canoe-building business, my foreman once asked me why boats were so beautiful. Anticipating a nugget of wisdom, I demurred. The answer was, “there are no straight lines in them.” This is a useful insight and may be why wooden boats are often considered to have obtained a level of beauty that contemporary boats, with their pre-formed componentry, lack.

Women

It is probably true that the form of women is the mother of many other forms. Everyone seems to respond favor­ably to the form of certain women.

I’m not sure of the usefulness of these reflections on form, but I am intrigued by why we do what we do.                       .

Paul Epp is an emeritus professor at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design department.

The word brand is much in the news these days. The frequent use isn’t particularly new, but it’s not letting up. It seems that brands are a bigger part of how we think of our world now. It wasn’t always this way, and, as the concept of brands has developed, our understanding of them and use of the concept, have changed as well.

It seems that the word and its attendant idea derive from the practice of cowboys searing their marks into the flanks of calves, on the 19th-century Texas plains. How else were they to identify their own property when their produce was largely undifferentiated? Young calves, after all, look very much alike as they run to hide in the brush.

In the case of the cowboys, the purpose was to identify the owner. It is likely that the products, the calves now grown into cows andsteers, were not qualitatively different from ranch to ranch. It is unlikely that buyers sought one brand in preference to another.

Quality, not quantity

So there has been a big shift in how the word brand is used. We know it is now intended to identify quality (or various discrete qualities) rather than quantity. How did this happen?

For a maker to identify his products with some mark is hardly new. It is usually said to have arisen with the start of the Industrial Revolution, in the 19^th century, but I suspect the practice has been around as long as makers have organized their making in such a way as to increase their volume and sales.  I have seen ancient Greek oil lamps, as identical as wheel-thrown objects can be, marked with a distinct stamp, or brand, showing they have all come from the same source. Stradivarius was signing his violinsthrough 1720. This might have been simple vanity, the way Sunday painters dutifully sign their work without hope of eventual appreciation, but I doubt it. A maker, serious about his business, might wish to claim ownership, or authorship, because that act wouldconfer extra value to the object produced. Not all makers are equal, so why not push for a marketing advantage?

Marketing as an entity

What is surprising is how many manufactured articles have been anonymous. The generalized notion that value can be generated by the identification of the maker is comparatively new. When a handful of western European nations took to transforming themselves into manufacturing economies, they sought captive markets for their wares. Hence the scramble for colonies. At that time, goods were often identified with  their country of origin, not the individual maker. French lace. English blankets. And so on. They dominated their dominions as countries, not as corporations.

With the post-war collapse of the colonial structure, individual corporations have been forced to do their own marketing, and brand  identification has proven to be a powerful tool in achieving this. I think what is most remarkable is just how successful this concept hasbeen. All travelers know they will find the same products to be available, regardless of where in the world they are.

It seems we are now in a new era of colonization, but this one is of brands. The world’s top brands remain overwhelmingly American, which is not surprising. America is the top country after all, by many standards. What is surprising, though, is after that how mixed the list becomes. Japan and Germany certainly dominate the auto industry. Italy and France top the luxury goods. Finland’s Nokia is the largest cell phone maker. And so on.

Eager colonies

Developed countries retain some advantages, even though manufacturing may no longer be one of them, and I think that advantage is education. The dominant international brands establish the dominant international style. They set the aesthetic and visual standards. They do this with their own educated designers and marketers. Collectively, they are the alpha males, so to speak. Theirs is the visualDNA that gets passed along. Countries that do not have the same level of education, confidence and capitol structures embrace and follow this leadership. As well as consuming it, they imitate it with their own manufacturing and novice brands. They seem to be anxious not to be left out, and not to remain at the bottom of this pack’s social order. The foreign DNA is embraced, absorbed and replicated.

It’s a (mostly) peaceful takeover of the world. Neo colonization via brands. Who would have guessed?

Paul Epp is an emeritus professor at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design department.

Value is a word that is worth reflecting on. In fact, it’s more central to our lives than we are generally aware. Usually, we use this word in reference to economics. When it comes to buying or selling things, there is a possibility that cost can be accurately established. The seller determines the price, however arbitrary it might be.

But value remains the possession of the buyer. If something is valuable enough to you, you will try to get it. Conversely, if the value isn’t there, for you, then you pass by. For designers, engaged in the production of things, or even services, this equation is critical. Great attention can be paid to controlling cost and great care can be exercised in determining a price, but if the designer has not created value, then the whole enterprise is futile. And determining what might be valuable to another is an interesting challenge, and a target that is easily missed.

During my work as an educator, I had plenty of opportunities to consider value. In fact, I eventually concluded that teaching is essentially an exercise in the transmission of values. We, the teachers, engage in all sorts of stratagems to convince our students, however subtly, that certain knowledge is valuable, certain facts are valuable, certain skills are valuable. We set up certain things as being good (correct) and others as being less so. We reinforce this with exercises and eventually examinations where we have the opportunity for an ultimate reinforcement of our claims. Seeing it this way makes it feel, to me, as a very weighty responsibility, and I guess it is. The students go on to use their newly acquired distinction of values as a guide for their lives, and eventually, to pass along to others. Whew!

Designers learn a hierarchy of values, whether at school, or just by bumbling along, making mistakes and learning from them. Even though I went to school, most of what I learned I acquired the other way, variously known as the school of hard knocks. And I’m not knocking that school either. One of my favourite observations about teaching (or learning) is that which hurts, teaches (it sounds better in Latin). We value the absence of hurt a lot, and learn to avoid it, if we can. Our mistakes are part of the foundation of the structure we make of our values. And this is one reason that experience is valuable to designers and is a critical component of what makes them valuable to others.

When we design, we are constantly making decisions and we base our decisions on what we consider to be valuable. When I was only teaching part-time and concurrently running a design studio, a former student who was now an employee made the observation that he was learning a lot more working for me and more quickly than when he was a student. And I think that was because he was observing a value structure in action. I would guide his work based on what I considered to be good, or accurate, or valuable, and I would do this quickly and with confidence. A problem with schools is that the work is theoretical. It is different when there are real consequences and there is less room for argument.

A second way we use the word value, is in the realm of philosophy and, in particular, ethical philosophy. Here it is concerned with the right course of action and with regard to the eventual outcomes. Actions are treated a bit like objects, with values attached to them. This may concern the avoidance of pain, or the increase of pleasure, or joy, or peace or any of the other abstracts we value. Values may even be concerned with the benefit to others. Sometimes our ethical structure of values will be described as the underpinnings of our character.

In fact, these two ways of using the word value, or values, are not that dissimilar. We make our decisions based on what we value, what we find to be valuable. Our values are who we are. This may be especially true of teachers and designers, but it holds for all of us regardless. An important reflection of our values is our sense of gratitude. The more we find to be valuable, the more opportunities we have to be grateful. And as I’ve learned, a grateful life is better.

Paul Epp is professor emeritus at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design department.