Blobject

A Blobject is most often a colorful, mass-produced, plastic-based, emotionally engaging, consumer product that features a curvilinear, flowing shape. This fluid and curvaceous form is the blobject's most distinctive feature. The word is a contraction or portmanteau of blobby and object and was coined by Steven Skov Holt, the design critic snd educator, in the early 1990s; author and design journalist Phil Patton attributed the word to Holt in 1993 in Esquire magazine.

Blobjects can also be found in all of the other areas of contemporary visual culture. A blobject can be a typographic font (c.f. Neville Brody), an animation (c.f. Monica Peon), a piece of furniture Marc Newson, an article of clothing Rei Kawakubo, a motorcycle GK Dynasmics, a building Future Systems, a painting Rex Ray, a piece of sculpture Hadeki Matsumoto, or ceramics work Ken Price. Blobjects can be made of any material in any size or scale for the home, office, car, or outdoors. Common materials used in fabricating blobjects are plastic (especially polycarbonate, polypropylene, or polyethylene), metal, and rubber, with the aim being to give a more organic and animate feel.

Karim Rashid, the contemporary designer who wrote the book I want to Change the World, was an early leader in creating blobjects and has become one of the most celebrated designers of the new generation. In the past, form followed function so that a product always tended to look like what was inside it, but that is no longer always true. Advances in computer-aided design, software visualization, rapid prototyping, materials, and injection molding have given designers the chance to use new shapes and to explore transparency and translucency without significant extra production costs.

Examples of blobjects

• Apple iMac computer
• Volkswagen Beetle
• Gillette Mach 3 razor
• Oral-B toothbrush
• Swatch Twinphone
• Phillips USB webcam (inspired by Mr. Potato Head)
• Handspring Visor PDA >>>THIS IS NOT A BLOBJECT! The Handspring is not a blobject but a SQUIRCLE, a hybrid construction made from "square" and "circle!"
• Lockheed Lounge chair
• Go Chair
• Philou shampoo and conditioner bottles
• POAA barbell
• Selfridge's department store

Further reading

• Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the next fifty years by Bruce Sterling
• Blobjects & Beyond: The New Fluidity in Design by Steven Skov Holt and Mara Holt Skov

External links

• Boing Boing: When Blobjects Rule the Earth by Bruce Sterling
• Karim Rashid
• http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/justback/blobject.html
• http://www.chroniclebooks.com/site/catalog/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_info&products_id=4908&store=books
• http://www.sjmusart.org/blobjects/
• http://www.cca.edu/academics/industrialdesign/faculty.php