Art is everywhere, according to Nice Work host Tyler Lake who cannot help but dwell on the materials, forms, and graphic treatments of the endless supply of consumer products that surround us all. Clothes, furniture, transportation, even the mundane like packaged food and cleaning supplies all come uncomfortably wrapped up inside of some form of art. Designers, often artists in their own right, create products that are rooted in a greater artistic ideals in mind while the commercial world finds its place in art through commentary, recontextualization, and direct aesthetic imitation.
What separates art from commerce has often been the crass commercializing that art was meant to rise above; that line is so fuzzy now, maybe always has been, that it may well be what really separates them is quantity. Turning a designer’s good idea into a real-world product, manufactured in dizzying quantities, meeting the requirements of legislators, quality control, the customer, and the C-suite is the hard work of a product developer. There is even more to it, and Debra Pearson, Co-Director of the Center for Innovative Merchandising, Co-Faculty Advisor for the Retail Studies Organization, and Senior Lecturer in Merchandising at Eskenazi School of Art Architecture and Design at Indiana University, tells Tyler all about how our favorite products go from idea to inventory.
