The aesthetic of plastic

Back when plastic was having its day, its aesthetic, that was born from its ability to morph and be colored, defined an age. It both reflected popular culture and influenced it. The Italian avant-gard movements of the 1950’s & 60’s played with new forms, surfaces, pattern, transparency and gloss levels that expressed and celebrated the aesthetic of plastic and marked its evolution away from the dark Bakelite of its early incarnation. Since then plastic has gone from a well-rounded, glossy and bright colored character into a personality that is still trying to find it’s place in the future.

In an interview with Petra Cullmann director of the K Show the biggest plastic show in earth that will be posted later in this series, she explained that a solution to our problems lie not with reducing plastic but using more of it to reduce weight in cars for example, while we all want our materials to support stories of sustainability in our products it is difficult to know how to visualise post-consumer waste, light-weighting or how its appearance can be adapted and given a higher value to take on the ‘real’ materials that are so dominant like glass and metals that would perhaps encourage us to keep our products a little longer. So what is the aesthetic of plastics and what are the trends that capture the CMF that is in constant motion?

Photo: Transparency: layered depths and enhanced visibility for emotionally-rewarding experiences. Photo by Gianni Diliberto.

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Interviews

Back when plastic was having its day, its aesthetic, that was born from its ability to morph and be colored, defined an age. It both reflected popular culture and influenced it. The Italian avant-gard movements of the 1950’s & 60’s played with new forms, surfaces, pattern, transparency and gloss levels that expressed and celebrated the aesthetic of plastic and marked its evolution away from the dark Bakelite of its early incarnation. Since then plastic has gone from a well-rounded, glossy and bright colored character into a personality that is still trying to find it’s place in the future.

In an interview with Petra Cullmann director of the K Show the biggest plastic show in earth that will be posted later in this series, she explained that a solution to our problems lie not with reducing plastic but using more of it to reduce weight in cars for example, while we all want our materials to support stories of sustainability in our products it is difficult to know how to visualise post-consumer waste, light-weighting or how its appearance can be adapted and given a higher value to take on the ‘real’ materials that are so dominant like glass and metals that would perhaps encourage us to keep our products a little longer. So what is the aesthetic of plastics and what are the trends that capture the CMF that is in constant motion?

Transparency

Transparency gives us confidence in our products, a feeling of achievement. It gives products an alluring look of ‘partial visibility and it is one of the most searched attributes in design materials databases. From providing a transparent window in a product housing that allows users to understand its workings, to a Dyson vacuum cleaner that gives us that emotional reward and sense of achievement that the dirt that was once on your floor is now tidily captured in the transparent bin transparency has functional, sensorial and emotional rewards. As plastics advance to technically challenge the properties of glass, so do the opportunities to create poetic color combinations through subtly tinted translucent plastics continue to seduce us.

Sustainable composites

While some brands may not want to make a noise about their environmental approach to plastics, there are others that want to make sure these stories take on an aesthetic that can be appreciated by consumers.

The first wave of bio-based plastics resulted in a crunchy and brown aesthetic. Due to the mostly wood fibre content mixed with virgin plastics. Today the speckled effect is the ‘on-trend’ evolution of this giving consumers a refined update. But the idea of using post-consumer waste from engineering plastics from cars and electronics means it is difficult to get away black and grey however plastic compounders are now developing ingredients that gives these materials a new aesthetic lease of life based on bright colors.

Soft tactility

In an interview with Ivy Ross VP of Hardware Design at Google in this series she explains Googles approach to plastics as one that gives tech a soft human relatable personality. In this aesthetic group plastics take on a decorative and functional soft patterns are molded onto both rigid and soft plastics to create sensorial cues that focus on tactility that feel like they are taking plastics into the areas of emotional comfort.

Premium plastic

Plastic plays to both the low and high ground in its aesthetic, from low-cost to the premium ‘unashamedly plastic’ of how `Apple described iPhone 5.

The concept that plastics can be used to define a premium experience where the product is elevated rather than being covered up -paints etc- points to a future where plastics could be used for more durable products that we might want to keep rather than dispose. Sensitive design can celebrate the intrinsic properties of plastics through thoughtful treatment of their processing. As the contemporary cousin of ‘luxury’, premium plastics can be a very slippery thing to define. Many brands are searching for ways to elevate materials to this higher level but how to achieve this when specifying plastics is hard to do. It is a property that manifests itself through different expressions of sensorial in some ways abducting properties –such as coldness or weight. ceramics.