Make it new

The book by Barry M. Katz, published by MIT Press with foreword by John Maeda, reconstructs the unique story of the formation and development of the social and cultural system with the world’s highest designer density. And debunks some myths.

Barry M. Katz, Make it new, The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, London England, 2015, pp. 253.

MIT Press recently published a Barry M. Katz book, with a foreword by John Maeda, reconstructing the unique story of the formation and development of the social and cultural system with the world’s highest designer density.

The author of the well-researched and original essay on the history of Silicon Valley design refers in the title to Confucius’ invitation to “day by day renew”, seeing it as a concise image of the spirit that drives the Californian community with the highest technology levels on the planet. Barry Katz is a professor of industrial and interaction design at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and the author of fascinating insights into the evolution of design thinking, published in Change by Design and NonObject. He traces the history of the role design has played and continues to play as a link between research and development, between aesthetic and logistics, and between the technical performance and human conduct that have forged this “ecosystem of innovation”.

Starting from the 1950s and the founding of Stanford University’s technological incubator, the Stanford Research Park, the author develops an in-depth analysis of the Silicon Valley phenomenon, right up to the present day and to major Internet multinationals such as Facebook and Google. He demonstrates the centrality of design as an integration factor in product development processes and, more importantly, in determining the scenarios and strategies of the production realities operating in the San Francisco’s urban area South Bay.

In his foreword, John Maeda states that, to its credit, Katz’ research shows the uniqueness of this extraordinary melting pot of creative sensitivity which works as one with an unequalled capacity for technological development. Make it New is the product of in-depth study, verified in the field via thousands of interviews between the author and many members of the community that revolves around the Silicon Valley design system. This community invested more than $100,000 in this remarkable document, which conveys the stubbornness and clarity of intention of a group of people who are constantly churning out new ideas via the integrated proliferation of private research centres and genuine incubators of transdisciplinary ideas employing global talents, all part of a system where public university and private initiative converse on a daily basis.

The legendary anecdote presenting Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak – founders and inventors of the brand featuring an apple with a bite taken out of it – as geeky nerds who secretly assembled the first Apple computers in the garage of Jobs’ parents’ home in Los Altos, California is rooted in the collective imagination, as is the famous claim: “Stay hungry Stay foolish”. Actually, it was an exaggeration specially designed to relaunch the myth of the self-made American man, as Katz explains, amusingly and in detail, placing the episode in the experimental workshop that was Hewlett Packard, the Cupertino firm where the pair worked and which allowed its employees to develop and produce parallel and innovative projects in its research centre.

Wozniack, himself, has said they have HP to thank for permitting them to do everything on site: “soldering things together, putting the chips together, designing them, drawing them on drafting tables.” “The garage is a bit of a myth. We did no designs there, no breadboarding, no prototyping, no planning of products. We did no manufacturing there. The garage didn't serve much purpose, except it was something for us to feel was our home.” In reality, it was the depot for their first products and a place where they swapped ideas.

The author of Make it New believes the perspective of this integrated and systemic vision centred on a design in dialogue with scientific/technological research helped promote the founding, in 1965, of IDSA, the Industrial Designers Society of America, inspired by the theoretical visions of Victor Papanek and especially his Design for the Real World Human Ecology and Social Change, where he criticises design seen as “design cosmetics” and claims a central role for designers focused on the community as a system of shared values and references. What role, then, does the Silicon Valley designer play today? Katz refers to a definition dear also to Papanek, stating that, in the contemporary world, design is the most powerful tool with which man shapes his tools and environments and, by extension, society and himself. He proposes the Californian model as a sustainable and highly integrated archetype balancing production, profit and the quality of the natural and social context.

Design came slightly later to Silicon Valley than to Europe but the clear vision of its potential has triggered a constant flow not only of products but, more importantly, ideas. It is these that find fertile terrain for proliferation in the Valley’s system, generating a social structure that self-perpetuates with opportunities and possibilities. As Barry Katz says, in 60 years Silicon Valley design has broadened its field of action, no longer simply an aesthetic back-up to the production of electronic devices but an integrated socio-economic system studied worldwide but that remains inimitable and unexportable.

Make it new

The book by Barry M. Katz, published by MIT Press with foreword by John Maeda, reconstructs the unique story of the formation and development of the social and cultural system with the world’s highest designer density. And debunks some myths.

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