Is Industrial Design Dead? Or Are We Just Noticing Its Evolution?

Every decade or so, the design world seems to rediscover the question: “Is industrial design dead?” The latest wave of articles and debates spanning Hackaday’s lament for the “era of dull electronics” to academic analyses of a field in crisis suggests the question is as relevant in 2025 as it was in 1975.

But what are we really witnessing?

On one hand, the critics have a point. The physical world of products is changing. Devices are shrinking, interfaces are dissolving into glass rectangles, and the tactile complexity that once defined industrial design is often replaced by digital minimalism. Veteran designers on forums and in journals describe a sense of loss: fewer knobs, less personality, and a shrinking canvas for physical creativity. Academic research even points to a crisis of identity, as “industrial design” is subsumed by broader “product design” or digital disciplines.

And in my own experience, I see this every day, so many new products seem to follow a “vanilla” template that is safe, familiar, and almost indistinguishable from one another. It’s as if the market is more interested in copying what’s already popular than in taking risks or pushing boundaries. The result? A sea of sameness, where genuine innovation is harder to spot and even harder to champion.

Yet, to declare the field “dead” is to misunderstand the nature of design itself. Design has always been about adaptation. The boundaries of the discipline have never been fixed, they’ve shifted with every technological leap, from the birth of plastics to the rise of the microchip. Today, the forces reshaping industrial design are digitalisation, sustainability, and the democratisation of design tools. AI, additive manufacturing, and cloud collaboration are not killing design; they’re expanding its reach and changing its methods.

What’s really happening?

Industrial design is undergoing a profound transformation. The skills and mindsets that once defined the field, empathy, systems thinking, the ability to translate human needs into tangible solutions are more valuable than ever. But they’re being applied in new contexts:

• Designing for circular economies and sustainable materials

• Creating seamless experiences that blend hardware and software

• Navigating the ethical and practical challenges of AI-driven products Collaborating across disciplines and geographies in ways unimaginable a generation ago

• The “death” narrative, as Ryan Rumsey’s archive of a century’s worth of obituaries for design shows, is itself a recurring feature of the field. Each time, design emerges changed but not diminished, its relevance proven by its ability to solve new problems in new ways.

So, is industrial design dead?

Not at all. It’s simply less visible in the ways we used to recognise, and more embedded in the systems, services, and experiences that define modern life. The challenge and the opportunity for today’s designers is to embrace this evolution, to shape the future rather than mourn the past.

Do you think industrial design is evolving or losing its soul?