DES 40B Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Compact Cassette, Walkman, Transistor Radio
Lecture 14: 5/22/18
What did Postmodernists believe?
• Woodstock Festival, New York, 1969
o Hippies were a non-conformist movement opposed to militarization and
consumerism
o Sought group community and identity
• Postmodern Culture
o From mass universalism to individualism
o Monocultural to multicultural
o Passive to active listening/media consumption
• Core Concepts for these Classes
o Individuation of media consumption entailed “postmodern” emphasis on lifestyle
and consumer identoty
▪ No longer possible to assume that consumers were the same
o Design pays less attention to function and more attention to appeal
o Designers become increasingly central to an accelerated marketplace
• Sony’s Post-War Consumer Electronics and their Marketing
o Miniaturization
▪ Sony released pocket-sized radio in 1957
• Marketed as world’s smallest transistor radio
• Followed by more innovations
▪ Opened US market and launched new industry of consumer
microelectronics
o Sony’s entry into US Market coincided with an increasing US fascination with
Japanese design post-war
o Played with youth and gender as expression of concurrent “difference”
• Design for Trends
o Accelerating post-war consumption also accelerated fashion and trends
▪ Ex: 1960s, Miniaturization (ex: miniskirt)
• Sony patched consumer electronics into an increasing post-war differential of values and
markets
o First seen in marketing directed at gender and youth
• Sony Walkman: a Design Icon
o Cassette as Design Module
▪ Early 1970s to Late 1990s, cassettes were one of 2 most common
formats of prerecorded music
• First alongside LP record and later the compact disc
▪ Audio Compact Cassette invented in Netherlands by Phillips in 1962
• Became dominant tape cartridge system when Phillips offered
format free of charge under Sony
• Became module around which Walkman was designed
o A Changed Technology of Listening
▪ Original Walkman introduced change in music listening habits
• Allowed people to carry music and listen through lightweight
headphones
• Sony Walkman TPS-L2 marketed in 1979
▪ Breakthrough Walkman was WM-2
Lecture 15: 5/24/18
• What made the Walkman WM-c “iconic”?
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