We can have TV about a group of wannabees sitting around a house doing nothing for weeks, TV where ugly men try and date a good looking woman so come on surely we could have some Design TV?
The last adult targeted design programme I can remember on TV was Better by Design a program about two product designers who each would would take an everyday product and try and make it better. It was great seeing the whole process from market research sketches, prototyping to the final product.
I have resorted to TV for ten year olds, Beat the Boss on BBC2 which pitches a team of adults against a team of kids. Both teams are given a brief to design a product targeted at children. So far I have seen shows where the teams create a board game, bike bag, practical joke product. The teams are shown at ideas stage, market research and working with experts to create their prototype. This TV show could so easily be transferred into a more heavy weight version for adults pitching teams of experts against the general public or teams of designers pitches against each other. What about graphic design too, why not apply this concept to teams designing a website or piece of print design.
I’m bored of big brother give me some design on TV please.
Am I missing some Design TV, is there any design on TV that you know about?
What sort of design TV do you want?
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19 Comments
I would qualify Food Network’s “Ace of Cakes” a level of design TV. http://www.aceofcakestv.com/
Hi Tara,
Yep, I refuse to give Big Brother even ONE second of my life. I can’t stand that program. As regards design programs, there’s not much is there? Believe it or not there used to be a Photoshop program on every Saturday morning here on RTE (Irish TV), but it’s over now.
I saw another one on Channel 4 a while ago where someone was working as a graphic designer. I only caught the end of it and it was one episode of a longer series were people made a dramatic career change. Can’t remember what it was called though.
Also something to do with Channel 4 was this:
http://www.channel4.com/4talent/feature.jsp?id=4667 but I’m not sure if it was on telly, but you might find it interesting.
Apart from that I have to make do with interior design programs…
If you’re going for Reality TV, there’s HGTV Design Star; all about interior decoration, but pretty awesome nontheless!
http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/design_star/
Enjoy!
I don’t watch too much TV, but Discovery Channel has Junkyard Wars. It’s not a whole lot of design (as in graphic, interior, fashion), but basically two teams are suppose to come up with a machine. The parts can only be from the junkyard where the competition is held. They have a little over a day to design, build and test their machine and then the competition at the end is to see which team’s machine can do the task it’s designed to perform. I suppose it’s more of an engineering show but it can be pretty entertaining!
I’m so tired of reality television – if I ever get a chance to watch TV, there better be some paid actors on there who are trained in the art of entertaining me. I won’t watch another “oh no I have to eat a bug” or “how can I stay in the house another week” show, even if it had a design focus.
To be honest, by the time I get to the television, if I get there at all, I’m so done with design for the day that I just want to veg out in front of the tube. All I want to do is open a beer, put my feet up, and watch Law & Order for two hours until my brain goes to sleep.
Is that bad?
Haha, Joe, that’s not bad! It’s REAL! Like I said, I don’t watch TV much and when I do turn it on, it’s usually scifi shows
And those are on DVD because we don’t even have an antenna or cable/satellite. We only watch TV at other people’s houses! Am I weird? We don’t have a land line for the phone either, only cells.
Hi Justin, thanks for the suggestion I will take a look.
Hi Jennifer,it would be great it that channel 4 program was on TV, thanks for the link. You have reminded me of another arty program I watched when D list celebs went to art college, trouble is some of them annoyed me so much I had to sky plus it so I could fast forward bits.
Hi SuziQ, Thanks for the link I think I may have seen a similar show in the UK.
Hi Lauren, I would probably like the TV show you are talking about. Years ago I uses to watch a program where people used to have to build an egg transporter from junk and race them without breaking the egg, it was called The Great Egg Race. I’m a Sci-Fi fan too though I watch it on my own TV
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Hi Joe – you obviously haven’t caught design obsession disease
yet, but I am sure blogging means you are getting there. I have this terrible habbit of watching TV and doing something else at the same time – sketching ideas for my personal projects, writing blog posts and reading.
Tara, I’m so there with you watching TV (or DVD’s in my case) and doing something else, sketching, rearranging scrapbook layouts, trying to balance the checkbook… It would probably be a lot easier without the distraction. LOL
Agreed! I am hoping Joost and other good web TV services will bring around more independent TV, among them great design shows.
I vaguely remember a program every Saturday morning with an elderly man who sat down in the forest or by a river and painted amazing oil paintings. I think it was Irish or British. That is the closest I have come to finding design TV. ^^
I remember that guy to, on PBS, I always called him the “swoosh swoosh” guy because he used to always pick up a brush and say, “and just dab a little green and do a swoosh swish here and a swoosh swoosh here, and there now, you have a tree” Too funny.
Asgeir, Suzi,
I remember a similar programme years ago (I am showing my age now) called “Paint with Nancy”. She just seemed to daub oil paint on canvas but it always looked good in the end.
The Show of the oil painter is BOB ROSS! and he would say “happy trees” swoosh. YES I one that jr. state fair here in Ca for my painting and I got to paint with him before he passed away. sometimes he would have little animals with him on set too. he was an amazing man,
I am definitely one for Design TV and I utterly and truly agree that shows such as Big Brother, a house full of no-aim-in-life-ers, are filling television with utter rubbish, thus making me not watch it at all really – unless I need to or if there’s a good movie on.
Overall, we don’t need a TV network to have our own Design TV. There are many live web-based shows that are cropping up that feature on various things, take Chris Pirillo and his live tech. show that he hosts and records answers to questions directly to YouTube. It’s quite an interesting concept. Something like this can easily be incorporated for design. =)
Hi Steve,
I will have to take a look at Chris Pirillo’s show. Lets hope they start making some design ones too – and ban Big Brother
My perfect TV is a plug-in VR simulation just like the matrix! (without the dying part).
I forget exactly what it’s called, but in the US there is a great tv program on the Knowledge Network which shows how common things are manufactured. It’s not exactly a design program but I think it would appeal to anyone who is interested in that subject.
I don’t want “Almost a design show”.
I want a segmented design show with news, features, tips, and all sorts of sources of information and inspiration, packed into a solid 40 minute show.
It might be too “nichey” for local/national TV stations, but with the internet, who knows? It could be quite successful if done right.
It just needs someone with the right mixture of balls, money and experience.
Nice idea Dude I’d like that too.