Design Identity Crisis

The shows on The Learning Channel like Trading Spaces has for ever perverted the word 'design' among the general populous, but despite this, design as of late has come to a point of great identity crisis.

My thoughts on this started when I first saw this commercial (the commercial was removed from the web and is no longer available)

This ad goes through the various aspects of design and makes some good points like "design transforms" etc. However, the interesting contradiction of this commercial is that while design can transform, the average product, like those sold at Target, don't tend to transform, but temporarily satisfy the human pursuit for self-centered gratification defined by material gains. I do not own the sociological degree to fully defend that kind of statement, but I will try to at least illustrate it with a couple of examples.

The man at the end of the commercial pulls the stool off the wall and sits on it. By this action, Target proudly proclaims that this man is a unique self sufficient human being by choosing this 'quirky cool' stool. But in reality, this man has pulled off a stool, that was created long ago and has simply been re-formed in a plastic organic form by some celebrity designer, and is not unique by function at all. To add to this poor man's quandary, he's sitting on a stool that will look absolutely dated in a couple of months when its color goes out of style forcing him and all 50,000 other owners of this stool to kindly place that item in the landfill. Has this design transformed anything or anybody?

The other example is extravagant-mod design which is beautiful (and I'm glad it exists for that sake), like the plate you see below; but does it transform and do all those other neat things that Target claims design should do?

If design is intended to improve function and appeal to emotion, then what is this plate doing? Functionally it's bad, we won't discuss that, but it does seem create a different level of emotion than the average circular plate. The emotion this kind of design generally creates though is one of uniqueness due to its general obscurity and high price point. Therefore, the emotion design is eliciting, is at its base, one of self-centered, self-proclaimed uniqueness defined by material ownership.

I applaud Target for making a marginally better product that what is sold at a place like Wal-mart, but I believe the ignorance of the average consumer will continue to buy buy buy, no matter what they need as long as someone will 'design' it to massage their emotional insecurities (no matter what they may be); and they will continue to define themselves through product purchase due to their lack of ability to achieve genuine self-definition and self-actualization.

So what does design meaning these days? Is there just very little actual design taking place? Is design more surface than I think? Please post comments, I want your opinion.