Professor’s Plea For Better N.Z. Designs

Press, Volume C, Issue 29623, 20 September 1961, Page 10

Professor’s Plea For Better N.Z. Designs

"The Press” Special Service

AUCKLAND, Sept. 18. If manufacturers, advertising agents and packaging concerns were prepared to engage first-class designers with an understanding of modern design and a spirit of progress, there would be a marked change in the packaging 61 New Zealand products, said Professor P. Beadle, professor of fine arts at Auckland University. Professor Beadle said New Zealand had every opportunity to stand on its own feet not only in packaging but also in the manufactured artich inside the package. So often all that was re. quired of a young designer was to “re-hash” some other company’s efforts or slavishly imitate some of the gaudiest products of the American cut-price empire.

"If we make some of the finest butter in the world, why wrap it up in some ot the worst labels and cartons?” he asked. “I have always been convinced that the taste of the community is never as bad as buyers and salesmen would have their superiors believe. Packaging is a useful beginning.” The next step was to realise that New Zealand could design its own manufactured goods.

“I am utterly fed up with having ‘Swedish-style this,’ ‘ltalian-style that’ and others rammed down my throat. Are we so incompetent and so ashamed of what New Zealand is capable of pro. dueing that we must walk down Queen street labelled from head to toe like a globetrotter’s pormanteau? “If any economist can explain to me that this imported style attitude is vital to the New Zealand economy I will retire gracefully.” said Profesor Beadle. The blazer badges of representatives to the Empire Games at Perth were unbelievably dull and mediocre. It was obvious no designer

worthy of the name had any hand in designing them.

The rich simplicity of heraldry could play a brilliant part in emblems for a nation’s sportsmen and ambassadors. There were two organisations in New Zealand whose objects were to promote good design. Both hoped to earn and receive the wholehearted support of industry and commerce in a united advance toward higher standards of design in New Zealand.