A few years ago, I attended the opening of the new public library in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The event featured the unveiling of a sculpture commissioned by internationally renowned artist Richard Hunt, who was one of my fellow students at The School of Art Institute of Chicago in the early 1950s.
As I stood near the refreshments waiting to speak with Richard after the ceremony, I saw something remarkable. The director of the Center was within earshot, so I said, “If I knew you were going to exhibit my artwork here, I would have autographed it.”
“Do you have a job here?” she asked.
“Yes, I said. ‘Right there, that trash can.’
“Oh, is that your can?” She answered. “If we had known that, we would have cleaned it up!”
It turns out that he had attended art school in Detroit and knew about industrial design. I designed the can in the mid 1960’s while working for Sears, Roebuck and Company. Looking back on my career, it was one of the most significant and innovative products I’ve ever created. When that can hit the market, it did with the biggest bang you’ve ever heard: everyone was using it, but few people paid much attention to it.
designing the can
In the early 1960s, blow molding was on the rise as a process for manufacturing household items, and Sears was often at the forefront of innovation and product development. Richard Palase, a chemist in the Sears laboratory, proposed making a blow-molded polypropylene trash container and recommended it to Alan Karch, a Sears buyer. With Karch’s support, Sears assigned a team of technical professionals to the challenge. I was the designer on the team, and after numerous planning sessions with the prospective manufacturer, we established the direction of the product.
However, as with all products, the devil really was in the details. We needed to meet the recommended criteria: a dark color was recommended to withstand outdoor weather and UV rays; the container needed handles to transport it from one place to another; a sloped lid shape to allow rain or melted snow to run off; and handles at the bottom for easy emptying. The container would also have to withstand heavy impact from drops and bumps. The cap would be designed to be easy for the owner to remove, but difficult for animals such as dogs or raccoons. The form needed to be nested to maximize shipping quantities. Also, the surface had to be textured to help prevent scratches from shipping and use.
To convince people how much better this can was compared to previous ones, we did a test: We froze the can at 40 degrees below zero for a couple of days, put a 50-pound bag of sand in it, and dumped it down the drain. top of the a five-story building. The thing did not break! It just bounced.
We knew we were right, so the marketing department at Sears decided to stage an even bigger stunt: They dropped the can from a helicopter, and it worked fine again. The dumpster was granted a patent for the design details of its lid, which resisted opening if the bin was dropped or hit from the side. The product was very successful and profitable for Sears. Other generations of design followed adding wheels and a rectangular shape to accommodate better use of interior space with full grocery bags.
Design Life Factors
Throughout my career as an industrial designer, which included 33 years at Sears, 85 percent of my effort went into designing consumer products to improve the quality of people’s everyday lives. I designed everything from binoculars to cribs to televisions to toothbrushes and just about everything else, including many sewing machines. In fact, someone who had heard of my work once said, “You designed all those sewing machines? Well, you must be the Michael Jordan of sewing machine design!”
You could say Michael changed the game of basketball, but I don’t think designers can change the world. Rather, they can take what’s here and make the most of it. Shape and form work best when they seem to be there, not forced. I tried to make things seem like they just belonged; that they didn’t need to yell, “Look, here I am.” My best efforts resulted in products that did their job as expected: you look at it, you immediately guess what it’s supposed to do, and that’s exactly what it does. Or maybe I should say that the visual statements express a harmony with why the product exists, what it does; how it is made; what it’s made of, while looking nice if not beautiful.
Much of life factors into the design equation: business considerations, the social and natural sciences, art, engineering, or communications. Designing for me is living with an understanding and sensitivity towards these areas, and having the ability to address a specific need, such as the need for a quieter yet durable trash can that wouldn’t rattle or bang hard enough to wake the dead. silent. suburban street of the 1960s.
I once had a plaque on my desk that read, “How do you define a designer? You don’t define them. You describe them.”
The plaque went on to describe a person with an eye for aesthetics and a concern for profit; that he understood the problems of production and costs; and that he had a thorough working knowledge of many materials. Above all, he described a person who preferred to design from the inside out because he was as concerned with the function of the product as with its appearance.
