Futuristic design is related to form, surface, and display
The term “futurism” was coined by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who published the “Manifesto of Futurism” in 1909 in the French newspaper Le Figaro. With this, a name was given to a movement that attracted artists such as Balla, Boccioni, Carrà, and Sant’Elia.
These artists called for a radical rejection of social and artistic traditions, an unconditional respect for the new and modern, and a closer relationship between art, architecture, technology, and everyday objectsideas that gained popularity in Russia and other countries in the following years.
After the Second World War, design theorist Reyner Banham took up the term “futurism” once again, but applied it to the designs of his time rather than the Italian avant-garde. Since then, futuristic design has been used to specify the designs of any period that make prominent reference to a vision of the future. The stylistic characteristics of futuristic designs have been greatly inspired by the emergence of modern technological innovations in the fields of space travel, bioscience, and automobile technology, as well as the growing popularity of the science fiction genre.
Unlike the concept of innovation however, futuristic design, at least as an aesthetic category, is related to form, surface, and display, but not necessarily to design that is technically or artistically innovative. Examples of the genre can be found in the aerodynamic designs of early modernists like Gerrit Rietveld and Jean Prouve, as well the streamlined forms ( Streamline Design) of the 1930s and 1950s.
Yet the most significant period for futuristic design by far was the decade between 1960 and 1970. During this time, designs that looked like they came “from the future” were inspired by the race to land on the moon, as well as by new plastics designers like Joe Colombo, Pierre Paulin, and Olivier Mourgue in the product industry, and Paco Rabanne and Pierre Cardin in fashion. Another inspiration for designers was the flourishing genre of science-fiction films.
The set designs for the early James Bond films and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001–A Space Odyssey were some of the most prominent examples. The following decades saw futuristic-looking designs by Shiro Kuramata, Philippe Stark, and Marc Newson, but these were relatively less fashionable in the future-critical 1970s and 1980s. The genre experienced a revival in the 1990s when the miniaturization of technical components, especially in the consumer electronics sector, opened up a new range of possibilities in product-casing design.
The decade also saw the introduction of numerous new plastics into the industry. These developments gave the economy new faith in the future-altering power of innovative technologies. Some recent examples of this new form of futuristic design include the Apple computers by Jonathan Ive, furniture designs by Werner Aisslinger and Karim Rashid, and the numerous aerodynamic redesigns of the automobile industry.
Today, futuristic designs in consumer industries ranging from sports equipment to game consoles are typically directed at young, techno-savvy target audiences.
These industries are often as concerned with achieving aesthetic differentiation through futuristic styling as they are with making actual innovations in technology. In order to differentiate the uses of the term “futuristic design” in the contemporary context from historical stylistic trends, the term retrofuturism is sometimes used to describe futuristic aesthetics from the past.