Yes. Not in the sense of “every single product out there sells”. But more like “every single product has the potential to be sold if done right”. Go to the very next 99-cent store and take a look around. Most of this stuff was never ever touched by a professional designer. Yet they crank out millions of the same kind somewhere in China and ship it all around the world right to your neighborhood. Because it sells. It really does. People don’t ask themselves if they really need that awkwardly shaped toilet brush. They just buy it. And they also buy badly styled kitchen appliances if you sell it to them right. So “people buy it” is just no argument for a well made object.
I don’t know about anyone else here, but for me, fulfilling the customer’s needs is honest design. I will even go as far as to say that it is good design. Great design is fulfilling the customer’s unknown needs.
I agree.
Maybe even nostalgia is a need (I am not sure about that). But how is a superficially styled “retro shell” fulfilling that need exactely? Build a rock solid oven that lasts 40 years by using some old techniques and blueprints. I wouldn’t even mind. But the GE-Stuff is simply not fulfilling that “need for nostalgia” (if we assume that exists). It is just lying about that to the user until it falls apart. That’s the fundamental problem I have with this.
As for “authentic” design. Great. But to think it is the only “relevant” design is incorrect.
Ok, I challenge you: Show me a product that is still featured in one of those books about design and that is NOT authentic in it’s own way. Something truly fake, superficial and rehashed that is still considered a “gamechanger” or at least “important” in its time.