'Objectified' is a well-designed look at household items

"Objectified," Gary Hustwit's documentary about industrial design, is as sleek and handsome as any of the new and improved household items it exhibits.

Early in the movie, one of its many talking heads traces the history of the field to the need for mass production; arrows used by Chinese armies had to be standardized. From there, this moderately absorbing, digressive study hopscotches among designers in several countries, some of them serious thinkers, others eccentric show-offs.

Whether the item is a potato peeler, a computer or a toothbrush, there is a talking head to explain why it looks and feels the way it does. The rubber handle on the modern potato peeler, for instance, was invented to make it easier to use for people with arthritis.

Dieter Rams, the former design director for Braun, outlines the principles of good industrial design: It should make a product useful and be innovative, aesthetically pleasing, easy to understand, honest, unobtrusive, long-lived, consistent in every detail and environmentally friendly. Last, he says, good design is as little design as possible. Computer products from Apple are cited as epitomizing good design.

The biggest challenge to a field that has traditionally served the industrial goal of planned obsolescence, according to the movie, is a growing awareness that the world is being overrun by trash; sooner or later most of today's well-designed products will end up in landfills.

There is a need for "sustainability," for products that will "wear in" rather than "wear out." But old habits — especially highly profitable ones — die hard.