As he did for Helvetica's namesake typeface, Gary Hustwit gathered the world's top designers for his forthcoming documentary Objectified, telling the story of the magic behind the objects we use every day.
We're lucky enough to be the first folks anywhere to bring you the trailer for Objectified, and I'm excited. Helvetica, is one of my all-time favorite documentaries because it distilled a daunting stack of design theory books into a film that was not only beautiful and entertaining but seriously informative-you didn't have to be a Swiss RISD student to appreciate it, even though there was enough back and forth about modernist and post modern graphic design theory to fill a seminar or two.
And by the looks of the trailer here, Objectified seems poised to do the exact same thing for industrial design, and we'll be learning from the best: That is, of course, Apple's Jonathan Ive telling us about the psychology of our gadget purchases in the first voiceover. We also see several heavies from IDEO, the major design firm responsible for the first laptop and Apple's first mouse, among other things, as well as Naoto Fukasawa, whose credits include the Infobar phones for KDDI/au (that you may have seen at Gizmodo Gallery) as well as his awesome wall-mounted CD player for MUJI. Present too are Dan Formosa & Davin Stowell from Smart, designers of the Flip cameras, and Dieter Rams, a legendary designer from Braun who was one of Ive in particular's biggest influences.
Objectified should be premiering this Spring. Watch for more info on the official site, and if you missed Helvetica, it's getting its US TV premiere on PBS tomorrow night (check your local station's times here) in a slightly abbreviated hour-long version. [Objectified]