Shape and Identity

A case that makes its way into a great number of books and courses on industrial design is that of the Gestetner duplicator. Like the steam locomotive, the Gestetner machine took the shape of its functional parts—gears, cams, and linkages. Thinking that a less fussy, more modern look might boost sales, the company engaged then-36-year-old French artist Raymond Loewy to punch up their image. He designed a sleek black cover for the machine, a shape more consonant with the age of aviation then beginning. Loewy is now credited with creating an “Age of Streamlining,” in which nearly everything was updated to a smoothed-off "airflow look," often accented by bright “speed lines.”

In one of his excellent novels of intrigue, British author Eric Ambler describes an elderly German woman, searching for photos in a prewar chest of drawers “shaped as if to reduce its wind resistance.” Toasters, refrigerators, pencil sharpeners—indeed nearly all household goods—were in the 1930s reshaped in this way, illustrating the emotional power of shape.

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Since then, industrial design has laid claim to more than just “putting a new cover on an old function,” yet some critics continue to see "design" as a way to remake identities by covering up old ones (the “urban renewal” of the 1960s applied a “cover” in the form of apartment tower blocks, over functioning lower-income communities).

When I saw the scene in On Any Sunday in which motocrossers pile up in a mud hole then tried to find their bikes and continue, I could see there was some confusion; with the bright paint covered with mud, no one could tell his bike from anyone else's. The same was said of 600 sportbikes during the 1990s. "Spray them all with gray deck paint and only experts could tell them apart."

In the present era, even the deck paint might not be necessary; who can tell Honda's scoops, points, and stealth edges from Suzuki's or Yamaha's?

This reveals that identity can be pretty fragile. I could see this in Pro Stock Motorcycle drag racing at Gainesville last month; when the one-piece bodywork was lifted off those machines, there was nothing to suggest that this one was a V-Rod, that one a Hayabusa, and the one across the way a Victory Vision. The bodywork was a removable, interchangeable identity—machine clothing. Underneath, you would have to see the difference between a V&H 60-degree V-twin and an S&S 60-degree V-twin, but it would be easier to recognize the inline-four architecture of engines built on Suzuki GS crankcases. You would have to know what you were looking at.

It was something of a disillusionment when my indulgent uncle agreed to build from modeling clay a car 6 inches long, from the wheels up. He started with the ladder frame and cross members then added the engine, front and rear axles, and transmission and driveshaft, explaining each part as he made and installed them. I, at seven years old, was fascinated. Then he made a floorpan, seats, steering column, and wheel. At the end he made the body parts, fenders, and bumpers.

What struck me at the time was that the body shape had no relation to the parts inside. I was an eager observer of vehicles from our family Kaiser, so I knew that body shape could be the stack of boxes of a Model-A Ford or the half-streamlined look of a 1940 Chevy, whose curvy fenders had started to blend into its body or the modern fenders-and-body-in-one look of the 1949 Fords.

In other words, the body shape—which carried such emotional power (to me, every car and truck had a "face" which expressed something)—was completely irrelevant to function. It was just a stuck-on cover. When years later I was building racebikes, I knew that I could as easily mount a big-and-bulbous British-made Peel fairing, a narrow Vesco fairing, or just number plates and there would hardly be any performance difference. Debate raged over whether seatbacks should have a "spoiler" or be mounted flip-up style or horizontal. On the track, none of it made any difference. Seatbacks regularly fell off in races, and there was no change in lap time. When Mike Baldwin asked me to take off the lower fairing of his Yamaha TZ750 during a pre-Daytona tire test, he lapped quicker in the next session. John Britten had the same experience with his self-designed bike on a 20-mile straight road in New Zealand; it was faster without the lower cover.

Therefore, I make an effort to separate in my mind the emotional effects of motorcycle bodywork (whose marketing do I prefer?) from what can be known about the actual function within.