REDESIGNING ICONS

British Design Classics Stamp Set © Royal Mail 2009

What makes a design into a “design classic”? Is it just  our familiarity with it, or is it because a design has survived for a very long time?

A couple of years ago, the Royal Mail issued a set of stamps portraying a series of British design classics which included Penguin Book Jackets, Anglepoise Lamps, The (Anglo-French) Concorde, The Mini, the Mini-Skirt, Routemaster buses, Polypropylene chairs, K2 Telephone kiosks, The Supermarine Spitfire and the London Underground map. Other popular products that have become internationally regarded as classic include the Dualit toaster, the Coca Cola bottle, Barcelona chairs and the Bialetti coffee maker. All designs that are sought after, admired and generally well regarded. Some of them have gone on to be regarded as iconic images, and it seems almost compulsory with at least three of the British ones (Bus, Mini, Kiosk) to include them in any movie featuring England as a location.

There is another British design classics that I would also consider to be an iconic image, one that was built for a telly show that I’m still rather fond of but which has gone on to become one of the most recognisable items ever to have come out of British television.

The Dalek.

The “egg-whisk”. The sink plunger. The bumpy skirt. The unmistakable voice. A monster that could be easily imitated by any child in the land by sticking out their arms and talking in a staccato monotone and became such an instant runaway success that they returned time and time again to menace the teatime hero who had so utterly vanquished them during their first encounter.

Simple.

So simple that it’s been almost impossible to come up with anything quite as successful in the subsequent 48 years.

Iconic.

The original was designed on a shoestring budget and a certain amount of genius in an ability to make something out of nothing, by a BBC staff designer called Raymond Cusick, way back in 1963, and, once filming was completed on that first seven part serial, it was assumed that they would never be needed again and some of them were even given away to a Children's Home. Once the serial was broadcast, however, the design of those (half) machines rapidly became iconic and nationally recognised, and toy replicas sold by the million, but that staff designer never made anything from that exploitation of his work apart from his original paycheque, and took a long time to get any credit for his brilliance, because he’d produced his designs as an employee. Later on though, he was, rather begrudgingly, given a £50 bonus, oh, and a Blue Peter badge.

The writer of those episodes, Terry Nation, of course, made a small fortune out of his creations (unless you really think it was Davros…) because of this short description of the aliens in his original script: “Hideous machine-like creatures, they are legless, moving on a round base. They have no human features. A lens on a flexible shaft acts as an eye, arms with mechanical grips for hands. The creatures hold strange weapons in their hands.” Of course we should recognise and applaud his abilities as a writer for coming up with this very fine concept, and admire him for creating a very impressive set of scripts for his designer to work from, but I do sometimes wonder quite how much of the impact those creatures made on those impressionable young minds back then was due to the look of them. Design is such a visual thing that we can't just dismiss the contribution the designer made very easily.

Sometimes the life of a designer can seem very unfair.

Last April, during the fifth year of its revival, the new series had taken it upon itself to radically (and rather bravely) redesign these iconic monsters, and got rather heavily criticised in certain quarters when they were revealed.

You mess with design classics at your peril.

There were all sorts of complaints: The proportions were all wrong; They had a nasty bump at the back;. They looked plastic-y; They were a cynical attempt to cash in on the toy market.

All very true observations, and yet…

Now, after the better part of a year, I’ve kind of got used to it and it sort of looks “normal” now, and, whilst I thought last year I would never think this, when I stand the new version next to the old model, the old model kind of looks… well “old” next to it.

I can even claim that the sloped slatty bit under the dome also resembles my own rather rubbish redesign (all sort of "shuttlecocky") which I drew in the 1970s, which only goes to prove something or other, I suppose…

When the Ford Sierra first appeared it was such a radical departure from the much loved Cortina (even in its final boxiest incarnation) that it replaced, that it was pretty much universally loathed, being referred to by many as the “jellymould”, although, after we’d all had time to get used to it, it seemed to be a perfectly normal and acceptable sight on the streets and eventually most other new cars owed a little something to the radical new ideas its design included.

The same could be said of the “fat” new Mini, or the reimagining of the Fiat 500 or the VW Beetle. None ever seem manage to be quite as adorable as their illustrious ancestors at first, but with familiarity we kind of get used to them and grudgingly accept them. Maybe time and familiarity really is all it takes.

Bad design will always be bad design, and should rightly fall by the wayside, but good design will usually prevail.

I’m still not convinced that the revised Dalek design will ever replace its predecessor in the popular imagination, or indeed that it is necessarily a “good” redesign, I do think that I am at least adjusting to it.

And yes. I am a grown-up (sort of) who still gets given toys for Christmas!