the phenomenon of pedomorphosis in design
observations and mapping
Preface
Childlike and figurative design. Design toys, toys for kids, toys for adults and kids’ items as miniatures of adults’ world. A car that reminds a baby and a mobile phone that it shrinks to the size of a thumb. Activities, known as hobbies, for adults with over-sized toys. And screams of happiness in front of the cutest and sweetest gadget ever covered with million Hello Kitty stickers and a pink fury wrap.
Artifacts evolve from artifacts. But artifacts are made by human beings and thus they reflect humans needs and wants. As an extension of them psychology, beliefs, technology, culture and biology come in the spotlight. And human evolves not any more on the trees, but in a complex environment or artificial biotope, which actually he is creating.
This thesis intent to explore a specific morphology of design, which had or has great success among other morphologies. The perspective with which I intend to explore this success is not through marketing or sales analysis but via an evolutionary phenomenon called pedomorphosis[1], neotony or juvenification. They are terms in evolutionary biology referring to the retention, by adults in a species, of physical and psychological traits characteristic for juveniles. In terms of anthropology and sociology, pedomorphosis, in addition of the humankind’s physical and psychological development, can also explain the development of humans’ behavioral capacities.[2]
Theories of biology suggest that human’s neotenous characteristics were an evolutionary strategy that enabled Homo sapiens sapiens to evolve from his ancestors, the pithecanthropines, by shedding the anthropoid traits and replacing them with juvenile characteristics. This process in combination with the other mechanisms of evolution[3] gave to humans both physical and intellectual predominance over the animal kingdom. Some acknowledgeable neotenous characteristics in humans are the so called “baby face”, woman’s vellus hair, curved forehead, small teeth and of course many of his behavioral needs as curiosity, imagination, creativity, eagerness to learn, joyfulness and playfulness.
The term was first coined in 1884 to describe amphibians’ sexual maturity while still in the larval form. [4] Zoologists and biologists were the first who launched the concept of pedomorphosis and they developed it further. It was not until 1940s when anthropologists started to look for a closer relation between social behavior and pedomorphosis. Social sciences, in a parallel development with biology, psychology, neurology and sexology[5] since then have deal with the phenomenon and its effects on the human’s physical and behavioral development.
Many disciplines the past years have tried to apply the evolution theories according to their main field if interesting. Psychology, sexology, marketing and computer programming, they all have applied features that can be categorized as paedomorphical traits[6].
Arts extensively have used both the characteristics and the effects of pedomorphosis. In fashion design, illustration, film, architecture, painting, sculpture, literature we can find many themes and features that can be characterized as paedomorphical. The mini cloths, the Disney’s figures, the sci-fi’s adaptation of cute friendly aliens, Michael Graves’ postmodern architecture, Picasso’s childlike paintings and Miro’s crazy sculpture, have a great number of paedomorphical morphological and psychological characteristics.
In terms of design, in the postwar years, it has been noticed a tendency to develop product forms with childlike characteristics, proportions, colors, materials and even contexts. The example of Mini Morris (1959), Tupperware(1945), Michele De Lucchi’s household prototypes for Gimli, the evolution of the mobile telephone, the over sizing of lamps or minimizing chairs and the design toys can suggest such childlike characteristics. A common element, apart from the morphological ones is their popularity among the others products. They all appear to have both attractiveness and commercial success.
So I believe, all in all, that the concept of pedomorphosis can throw light on this still nameless and unidentified category in product design.
Hypothesis
The concept of paedomorphosis, it seems, it has not been employed among the explanations of childlike features in product design[7]. Though many researchers have attempted to understand the morphological elements that may be seen as paedomorphical it seems that they categorize them under other study topics. A first superficial reading of these characteristics will place them in the category of childish, figurative, children’s, toys’ and anthropomorphic design. [8]
So the hypothesis has been formulated to:
The biological theory of pedomorphosis can make the phenomenon of childlike elements in product design comprehensible.
Among my tasks will be to find out:
What kinds of products show the pedomorphic features?
What are the specific morphological elements of this phenomenon that makes the products attractive?
How external factors as perception, aesthetics and marketing modify this morphology?
What is the role of the designers in the use of the concept of pedomorphosis in design?
[1] Also spelled paedomorphosis.
[2] Capacity as a potentiality (Montagu 1989)
[3] Some of the other mechanisms of evolution are the gene mutation, selection pressures, genetic drift, hybridization and fixation of genes.
[4] For the history of pedomorphosis see Ashley Montagu’s Growing Young (1981)
[5] Especially in the fields of perception, cognition and children behavior.
[6] For example hairless sexual prototypes, playfulness in advertisement and intuitive approach in computer programming.
[7] There is not even one scientific paper on Design theory connected design with pedomorphosis
[8] I speculate that figurative and anthropomorphic design, though they have similar morphological expressions with the concept of pedomorphosis in design, they are somehow distinguished. But this I will try to formulate during this thesis.
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