Design For The Real World By Victor Papanek

Papanek’s Function Complex
In Design for the Real World, Victor Papanek discusses design as being “the conscious effort to impose meaningful order”(23) He believes that design should be used to create a meaningful object that in order has function. The clock is an object that directly falls under Papanek’s function complex in all aspects of it. A clock is an object that is not only widely known but is also used by practically everyone in the world. It is an object of order that is shared with all different cultures and societies in the world. It provides people with order to their days and an understanding of where others are in their town or across the world in another country. The clock also is an object that has fluxed over time, adapting to the culture and society as they grow and change over history.
The materials used to make a clock are usually the most effective and efficient materials, and those materials together create, again usually, an efficient and effective product that tells the correct time. It also is useful, second in the function complex. The clock is a very useful object in that it works in the ways that it is needed to. It tells the time correctly and is easily or automatically adjustable for different places and people all over the world. Being so widely accepted and useful, the clock has also become an essential need, especially in today’s world where time is always of the essence. This need is third of the function complex. This need, and not want, to get confused, is what makes the clock a functional part of the daily life of practically every