Industrial Design: Sense and Sensibility

At a time when most designers are stressing the sexy, Ben Beck is focusing on the smart. An industrial designer for (Eleven), the Boston-based firm he co-founded, Beck uses design to make products simpler. They may not be quite as racy looking as an iMac or a Beetle, but his sometimes colorful, mostly plastic and almost always sleek creations revive the notion that form should follow function. "Just by looking at something, you should know how it works," he says. "We're stating the obvious all the time." His birdcage, for instance, has a clear plastic front and back and a light, and a wavy perch that, he insists, prevents bird carpal-tunnel syndrome. These are the kinds of things Beck knows.

He learns most of them by spying on people: visiting their workplaces, watching them make purchases and, in the case of one of his clients, Burton Snowboards, riding down Vermont mountains to come up with the inspiration for a new form for boot bindings.

Beck, 40, the son of interior designer Dale Beck and George Beck, who designed the first portable TV for G.E. in the '50s, studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and opened (Eleven) four years ago. The boutique firm won three Industrial Design Excellence Awards last year, including one for a hanging cap rack that neatly holds the hats by the little buttons on top. Beck's firm also creates its own line of products, which includes a surprising amount of pet items, from a retractable leash with a flashlight to a covered Kitty Litter box. Says Beck: "It's just simple things, like trying to make life more pleasant even though it's just a cat taking a dump."

--By Joel Stein