Design for the Third Millennium

▪ 2001

by Patrick Coyne

      At the turn of the millennium, new product design—both functional and visually striking—was being showcased in homes around the world, defined the look of cars, and offered innovative styles for the products used for office or household work. Design not only reflected the current culture but also harkened back to the past as well as showing the promise of times to come—a future embodied in metallic, luminescent, and translucent objects that were also fluid, organic, humanistic, and often whimsical. The product that best exemplified this vision was the Apple iMac personal computer, which, less than two years after its introduction, paved the way for a flood of other home and office products similarly encased in tinted translucent plastic. The iMac's softer, rounder form was also incorporated into the design of such unglamorous everyday objects as the Umbra Garbino wastebasket, Michael Graves's toilet brush for Target, and OXO's Good Grips kitchen tools.

      Sleek car designs beckoned to the future, while others embraced the past, notably the new Volkswagen Beetle, the Chrysler PT Cruiser, and the Ford Thunderbird. The office landscape was changing too as the regulation cubicle and padded chair were being banished by Herman Miller's Resolve office system and Aeron chair and Studio eg's ecowork system. The cutting-edge design of the latter two included the use of recycled materials.

      The introduction of new handheld technology also had an effect on design. Products such as the Motorola Talkabout, Nokia's brightly coloured cellular phones, and the Palm VII personal digital assistant were developed with the use of existing design trends, but they represented an early glimpse of the wireless revolution that could eventually connect the workplace to the home as well as owners to their possessions and ultimately people to one another. The biggest impact on product design and daily life, however, probably would come from the continued miniaturization of new technology.

Patrick Coyne is editor and designer of Communication Arts magazine.

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