Transformation Design

I stopped into a shop called Waves L.L.C. on W. 30th. The L.L.C. stands for Limited Liability, they were very touchy about me taking pictures. I noticed that most of the older radios were designed to replicate a Cathedral window. Coming from a religious background it is interesting to me when I see ideology in consumer design. In fact the two are seemingly always linked. The products we buy tend to represent what we value in ourselves, or at least aspire to. These radios are designed to be representations of beauty, symetry, solidarity, and righteousness. It seems that media has always been connected to a sense of omnipotence. Voices from afar transmitted to locations around the world into your own living room are wonderous and magical; at least they were when people could first hear and see them. The power of everpresence that the radio and telegraph represented, and what other devices represent now, is the same power that people associate with spirits and gods. People trust these voices because of that power. Only in the past decade or two have Americans, arguably the most "involved" in media culturaly in the world, on a large scale begun to distrust media. And depending on how many more accept the information here, that distrust may grow to unprecedented levels. People identify themselves by their playlists and tv shows encoded on their portable media devices. The ear "buds" alone are a social signifier. Media has replaced religion as the main facet to our belief systems as well as systems of design. There's really no difference between the two in the western world anyway.






Mobil Gods. Such power things that are connected with the "invisible" have.
One of the first purveyors of the portable transistor radio was Zenith. The "The Royalty of"
the Zenith logo is an example of this idea of media as God, brought to you by powers from the heavens riding down upon Zeus' lightning bolt. What better marketing scheme than one that scares you into feeling protected?

amen