Michael Roller

Dyson DC24 Blueprint

We recently upgraded to a Dyson DC24 Blueprint. Rather than the traditional golden and metal colorway, the blueprint comes in white and has added printed details about range of motion, stress testing, and more technical information. It’s a beautiful product, inside and out, so I decided to document some of the less expected angles and share the design.

Admiring Dyson’s from afar, I always imagined that part of the beauty was in a “secret” level of detail where the appearance of deceptively simple volumes with tangent intersections were actually more sophisticated curvature surfaces (like an Apple laptop). In reality, they’re really just the simple forms we’d expect. Why do you think this works? Is there something cognitively “right” about assigning this vocabulary to tools like a vacuum cleaner? Looking at the Dyson in person reminds me of Gray Holland’s hypothesis on surfacing can relate to functionality. It will be interesting to see how Dyson products evolve now that they’ve become a lifestyle brand. Anyway, here are the pictures:

Tags: dyson, strategic aesthetics

2 Comments to Dyson DC24 Blueprint

1. 

   AHHH yes, seeing the work of ex- compatriots is like hearing voices of the past.

   These forms work because…

   1. JD oversees all of the product development.
   2. They use the most basic and pure forms, and shape them into functional forms
   3. The amount of detail does not come from one person in a team… Each part is Designed and Engineered by a whole team.
   4. THE Designers change hats in mid stream, and become Engineers- Damn, can they do tolerance Stacks!!!
B on June 9th, 2010
2. 

   So I recently tried to purchase my grandma a Dyson and I was a bit disappointed when inspecting the current models. I own a Dyson DC18; the slim. It’s beautiful and well designed. They replaced the model in the line up with the DC24, which I tried get my grandmother to adopt.

   But before I explain my issues, I must admit why I admired Dyson and recommended it to everyone, it’s not only because it has lossless suction. It’s easy to maneuver, it’s easy to clean, and it’s bad-ass to pull out the handle/wand/shotgun and pick up the little things.

   That being said. The DC24 is easy to maneuver. But cleaning the filters means getting down and rotating the ball and pushing a very hard button to get to one of the filters. On the DC24 model, they also made it a lot more tricky to pull out the hand-suction option. The whole time I was trying to figure it out I was cursing its affordances.

   All I could feel was betrayal that the brand didn’t mean what I thought it did. I now can no longer promote just any Dyson, but only my DC18–which I think was the most well thought out design in terms of a user. In terms of a product orientated design, all Dysons are bad-ass.

   But why did they go from one filter on the DC18 to two filters on the DC24? Why is one of the filters (in the ball) so hard to remove? Why can I pick up the vacuum by the giant handle on top screaming at me to grab without it telescoping. Why do you have to reattach the handle to use it as a vacuuming tool when the other models don’t require it to be so?
Aaron Kurosu on June 23rd, 2010

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