Trip to Target

Trip to Target

When Target hired Michael Graves they were counting on his designs to catch the Target shopper's eye. Graves has kitchen appliances and utensils that have a palette of colors ranging from blue handles to yellow and red knobs. I believe the designs did well for Target at the time they hired Graves. When I when to Target recently they seem to have moved into another direction away from Graves’s designs. Since we live in an ever changing society, Target seems to have branched out to other designers. Each designer has been designated to a limited area but, they each have distinct styles all their own. The common theme among the different designed pieces was that each of them was competing for the better price. Target always has comparable prices to their competitors, like Wal-Mart. Since the prices were comparable Target needs to have something unique to separate them from the competition. This is where the designers’ products are given chance to take off. Target gives these designers a chance to make a name for them-selves in the retail market. This can be seen in many of today’s products.

Steve Jobs, the master mind behind Apple, is a person that also came up with the idea that good physical designs are essential to generate a relationship with a consumer. To fulfill this idea, Jobs contracted a world-class designer to help him create his new products. What came from this was something called Snow White language which is an Apple proprietary design language. This design language helped transform the appearance of Apple's products and gain attention through numerous design awards. This design was what brought Apple to the public consumer (The Design Revolution: 1983-85 - Part 1 - frogdesign, 2010).

The need to have a great design is even seen in the automobile industry. Since the first automobile was produced each company had some sort of design in mind. At the beginning there was very little put into the design on the automobile. Most automobiles...