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Flowing, curvaceous gadgets took a back seat to boxier shapes with sharp, straight lines at CES this year, indicating a spreading design trend that experts say largely originates from Apple.
The "Blobject" had a good run. Advances in CAD software made this sinuous style possible and Apple made it popular starting with their first iMac. After the iconic Bondi Blue blob exploded in popularity, the trend transformed everything from staplers to soap bottles. CES 2013 seems to have ended the golden age of globules and ushered in a rectilinear revolution. In every product category from 3-D printers to biosensors, exuberant organic forms have been replaced with hard-edged alternatives.
While Apple doesn't exhibit at CES, they appear to be responsible for this trend. Since the original iMac, they've slowly transitioned their products from approachable plastic to cool metal and glass, with each generation becoming less curvy and colorful. Apple designers once talked about touring jelly bean factories to learn how to make plastic more playful. Today, it's more likely that they are visiting aerospace engineers or weapon manufacturers. The iPhone 5 killed off the last soft fillets on the device, replacing them with hard-edged, industrial chamfers and the world of industrial designers appears to have noticed.
"In the case of the iPhone 5, I've heard that the decision to create a monolith with chamfers was largely a need-based design decision, to reduce size while maximizing the internal capacity for battery, guts, etc.," says Nick de la Mare, executive creative director at Frog Design, the legendary San Francisco product design firm that helped Apple develop the industrial designs for its first products. He doesn't see the iPhone 5's design as a statement of aesthetics as much as function. "Rounded corners typically come at the expense of wasted size and material."
"I think there's definitely a move toward planar surfaces, but I don't think the iPhone started it," says de la Mare. "I think a lot of it simply comes down to the creation of a new norm in response to and reaction to the old norm. If you look across other industries you have an apparent trend toward stealth, beginning basically in the mass market with the introduction of the hard geometries and corners of the stealth fighter etc. —; witness the recent Lamborghini design language for example. In a sense it's just a celebration of the machine. These are perfect forms, unyielding and edged, things that only a computer could generate. And as such, a juxtaposition to the organic, more naturalistic elements we were seeing before."
Others see Apple's massive popularity as being an influencer of form. "Apple pioneered this radically clean and simple design aesthetic," says Karyn Lu, Manager of New Media Insights & Inspiration at Turner Broadcasting in Atlanta. She's paid to spot tech and design trends for the company that brings us CNN, Cartoon Network, and Adult Swim. and sees Apple's influence in this changing market.
"Now that their products are so popularized, I think that sensibility has really seeped into the mainstream consciousness, certainly going beyond technology into our everyday lives," she says. "There's something so straightforward and elegant about the lines and angles of geometric patterns; they've always been that way, of course, but now perhaps in part thanks to Apple, that look is taking on a whole new mass appeal."
She also sees other factors at work. "I think the biomimicry trend may play a role as well in the popularization of this design look, as well as a general trend toward de-teching and a nostalgia for more simplicity to return to our lives."
Sci-fi luminary Bruce Sterling writes in a essay, "Blobjects are the period objects of our time. They are the physical products that the digital revolution brought to the consumer shelf." Perhaps this new style is just a reflection of a changing mood — if blobjects reflected the enthusiasm of the early web, perhaps these faceted designs reflect today's more pessimistic climate? Until the final verdict is delivered by design historians, the products in this gallery are a preview of what's to come in this new linear landscape.
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