The Idea of Socialist Design: Iskra Show Review

Abstract

When I was growing up in socialist Yugoslavia, Iskra’s telephones and radios were a part of everyday life. Today these are the elements of the historical horizon of the socialist culture, which is in detail presented and reconsidered by the exhibition, “Iskra: Non-Aligned Design 1946–1990,” set up from November 12, 2009, to February 28, 2010 in the Architecture Museum of Ljubljana, in Slovenia. The Exhibition is accompanied by the separate editions of catalogs in Slovenian (title: Neuvrsceno oblikovanje) and English (title: Non-Aligned Design). Iskra was one of the leading companies in Yugoslavia, a maker of technological equipment and electronic consumer goods, and in the ideological jargon of that period, it was known also as “the factory” to emphasize the primary task of the period’s modernization. As were all the other major production companies, Iskra was founded in the period of the planned economy, when the government itself was the main corporation, and particularly developed after new elements of the market economy had been introduced in accordance with the economic reform of 1964. Until the late 1980s, Iskra was often set as an example of a company that in the context of the socialist ideology could implement all the elements taken from liberal capitalism. In this way, the management methods, industrial design as a part of the development strategy, perception of corporate identity, and the advertising strategy became part of a distinguished national and international presence. The exhibition of Iskra products in Ljubljana, organized by the Architectural Museum of Slovenia and Association Pekinpah,