But, Is it Art?
- Fine artists determine their own set of goals and approach them in the visual manner they choose, while designers are given goals from a client and must convey them in an appropriate manner.
- Although, once an artist has his or her goal set, the process includes the same method of development that a designer will employ in order to establish the visual embodiment of the idea or goal.
- Designer's, however often have to restrain their visual outcome in terms of readability or blatant information, as conventional artists have no bounds and may choose to conceal as much of their point as they'd like.
- Therefore, a designer and an artist are not entirely different, only in terms of medium and the result of a purpose.
M/M Discussion
- Art, be it design or fine art, should be about a collaboration between the artist or designer and the audience, not only the finished painting or aesthetic. Therefore, fine artists as well as designers must work with the fact that the audience will be interpreting the work, whether it's an abstract painting or a poster for a conference.
- Designers should not be looked upon as butlers, in that they are simply used to make things look better. They are there for the purpose of invention and visual problem solving when portraying information visually.
- To designers, context is infinitely important, as it is to most artists as well, but the limits of what one can do with the given context can be radically expansive in artists terms while designers must remain contained in abstraction in order to fulfill the mission of design.
- The freedom that the artists have though, can be limited by preferences in the art world; by what the galleries will exhibit.
- Artists like Michelangelo were hired to design the ceiling of a chapel, but his creativity was not haltered, so designers are not entirely limited to adhere to clarity.
- "Perhaps all we can say with conviction is that some art is as bad as design and some design is as good as art."
Art's Little Brother
- Designers follow artists, in that art is incredibly more expensive as well as much more highly praised and exalted.
- However, designers are beginning to include the amount of self expression that artists have always relied on in the past. Therefore, the divide between artists and designers is shortening, and critics can now, sometimes, see design as art as well.
- Design must exist somewhere in a piece of artwork. For example, even Pollock had to somehow decide where to drip his paint.
- A designer works for a client, meaning his or her conceptual goal is derived from an outside, often business oriented, source. An artist works for his or her self, with a personal concept and self-influenced motive.
- New digital tools have allowed designers to venture beyond simply information handling and identity, therefore the self expression not usually present can now be employed.
- Design critics, or designers themselves, have often disliked these types of design work, although it may complete the requirements of the client.
- Design, as opposed to art, relies on visual aesthetic and what can be considered good in those terms, however fine art does not pertain to such perimeters.
- The struggle with new, expressive and different design is not trying to debase fine art, but merely to raise awareness of design as an artform, designers as artists themselves, and its positive influence on the culture.
The theme of art and design is obvious in these three readings, but more specifically, there is a process motif in all three as well. All three articles state mention the difference between designers recieving a foreign concept, while artists work towards their own personal goal, but it is clear in the readings that they can relate in that the two work in terms of chasing a visual representation of the goal. In the M/M discussion there is mention of a gallery exhibit of design work or the designers personal work, and also stated is that as the concept of visual determination towards a conceptual agenda is being recognized by critics to be a part of design as well as fine art. Also, that the digital medium allows the designer to skip the tedious method of type setting, for example, therefore allowing more room for visual self expression and aesthetic freedom. So designers have assumed their signature style, inviting critics to recognizes a visual signature that has forever been a thread through fine artists and their work. But once again, the point with these articles was not to undermine fine art, and to establish design as a superior art form due to its universal significance, but rather to affirm that designers deserve praise in a way that artists do. Proof of that statement lies in stating that a piece of furniture, essentially a form of design, can be sold now for relatively the same price as a renowned painting or sculpture. In so many words, design can now be appreciated as art due to the realization of a designers individuality in his or her method as solving a conceptual or informational problem visually, the same way artists have done for many years, only sometimes without concepts of their own.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Vernacular Design
We're Here to be Bad
- Designers should be bad, not in visual style, but in terms of client cooperation.
- Design is required to distinguish the brand, rather than the actual quality of the product at hand.
- With big-time companies now competing globally, marketing has led design to "sell out," rather than improve the product to viewer relationship.
- Appropriate design, in terms of creating what is most promotable rather than supplying tasteful craftsmanship, is minimizing the boundaries of the design field.
- With design that may be considered risky, the grounds for good design can be reinvented when still compromising with a client.
Professionalism, Amateurism, and the Boundaries of Design
- The details of professionalism versus amateurism are only distinct in terms of their given learning instead of the work produced or talent exhibited.
- The DIY designer, as opposed to the employed professional, is able to cross boundaries and break rules, which may lead to innovative and praised work, whereas the professional is limited to the client's standards and desires.
- The popularity and implication of digital design programs broadened the field for design practitioners, and therefore, expanded the worth of credibility and exaltation.
- Vernacular design, or universal design, has some notable examples while, due to its high-spread tendencies, bad examples exist as well, if not more often.
- Design done locally, expressing the values and emotions of those who would be considered users, had special qualities that would be labeled with greatness, whereas the uniform corporate design included less of the instinctive qualities and more of the unfriendly, formal ones.
These two articles seemed to express the same notion of great design through non-conformity. Although written with different discipline and lengthiness, they have the same rebellious attitude that I believe to be necessary for the reinvention of standard impressiveness. We're here to be Bad expressed more of the "fuck the client" ideology, preaching a non-compromsing mentality in order to pursue great visual appeal as well as viewer supported content. Professionalism, Amateurism and Boundaries had more DIY promotion, however both focused on the ideals of being a professional, mentioning that being considered professional does not mean you are creating above average design, but in most cases lending more to what would be considered average even to the audience. I do believe, however that by being a professional and succumbing to the vernacular design is not bad, it is not what one does, but how one does things. Obviously, in graphic design, for instance, there is necessary content that one needs to include if working for a client, but when including the essential information to a viewer-intended graphic, there is room for divergence. There is place to stray politely, yet creatively enough that the image and text can be perceived as tasteful rather than redundant. There is an interesting connection between the supposed miraculous quality of a talented DIY-er and those who, as mentioned in "Bad," have portfolios that resemble their professors, and the professors who resemble their professors. It seems the instinctive intuition that had been commended in "Professionalism" will lead to the evolution of design, not the diligent student who finds safety in stopping at the boundaries.
- Designers should be bad, not in visual style, but in terms of client cooperation.
- Design is required to distinguish the brand, rather than the actual quality of the product at hand.
- With big-time companies now competing globally, marketing has led design to "sell out," rather than improve the product to viewer relationship.
- Appropriate design, in terms of creating what is most promotable rather than supplying tasteful craftsmanship, is minimizing the boundaries of the design field.
- With design that may be considered risky, the grounds for good design can be reinvented when still compromising with a client.
Professionalism, Amateurism, and the Boundaries of Design
- The details of professionalism versus amateurism are only distinct in terms of their given learning instead of the work produced or talent exhibited.
- The DIY designer, as opposed to the employed professional, is able to cross boundaries and break rules, which may lead to innovative and praised work, whereas the professional is limited to the client's standards and desires.
- The popularity and implication of digital design programs broadened the field for design practitioners, and therefore, expanded the worth of credibility and exaltation.
- Vernacular design, or universal design, has some notable examples while, due to its high-spread tendencies, bad examples exist as well, if not more often.
- Design done locally, expressing the values and emotions of those who would be considered users, had special qualities that would be labeled with greatness, whereas the uniform corporate design included less of the instinctive qualities and more of the unfriendly, formal ones.
These two articles seemed to express the same notion of great design through non-conformity. Although written with different discipline and lengthiness, they have the same rebellious attitude that I believe to be necessary for the reinvention of standard impressiveness. We're here to be Bad expressed more of the "fuck the client" ideology, preaching a non-compromsing mentality in order to pursue great visual appeal as well as viewer supported content. Professionalism, Amateurism and Boundaries had more DIY promotion, however both focused on the ideals of being a professional, mentioning that being considered professional does not mean you are creating above average design, but in most cases lending more to what would be considered average even to the audience. I do believe, however that by being a professional and succumbing to the vernacular design is not bad, it is not what one does, but how one does things. Obviously, in graphic design, for instance, there is necessary content that one needs to include if working for a client, but when including the essential information to a viewer-intended graphic, there is room for divergence. There is place to stray politely, yet creatively enough that the image and text can be perceived as tasteful rather than redundant. There is an interesting connection between the supposed miraculous quality of a talented DIY-er and those who, as mentioned in "Bad," have portfolios that resemble their professors, and the professors who resemble their professors. It seems the instinctive intuition that had been commended in "Professionalism" will lead to the evolution of design, not the diligent student who finds safety in stopping at the boundaries.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Design and Sustainability
The Sincerest Form of Flattery
- Engineering and industry must take examples from nature's own methods of sustainability.
- Instead of recycling local resources and keeping a certain area stable, humans have the habit of traveling to a new, energy rich place, therefore expending much of the planet's "lifeblood" over a greater area.
- Coevolutionary Loops are a necessary piece of the bio security problem and human's ability mistreat it.
- The Biomimicry is slowly taking affect, however in order to create a more supporting environment, many more engineers and designers have to realize it's potential.
A Question of Design
- The Industrial Revolution, as progressive as it was, had been poorly designed, or rather not designed at all, it's negative effects had taken place due to environmental unawareness.
- The Industrial Revolution led to the focusing of populations, and the regression in artisan skills.
- The Industrial Revolution also had caused more production and more affordable goods.
- The early industrialists and designers did not take notice of the grander aspect of the actions, therefore failing to provide the highest efficiency possible.
- The failure of these planners to do their jobs completely resulted in "intergenerational remote tyranny."
Speculative Prehistory of Humanity
- Once again, efficiency is not necessarily found in better forms of energy but it can be found in simple physics.
- "Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival.
- The greatest engineers of the world must retreat from using their minds for "weaponry" and divert to "livingry."
- Humans have some sort of grudge with technology, however only because they don't understand it as the reason they are able to survive on the planet.
The third set of readings seemed to focus on design, not in terms of graphics or fashion, but instead, in terms of industrial planning and objective. The running theme in all three articles was, obviously, sustainability, but mostly, how humans have left sustainability out of the blueprints in order to chase profit or for chauvinistic purpose. It seems as the human race develops new technologies, or makes something bigger and better than that of anything previous to it, the engineers and industrial designers behind such great endeavors focus on moving ahead yet again. In "A Question of Design," McDonough and Braugnart state this failure to create sustainability in terms of architecture and engineering. They say that intergenerational remote tyranny, where industry designers and leaders the world over fail to create a proper method of production, which results in serious problems for future generations. For instance, if we had not attempted to clean up our current methods of energy usage, the environment for our succeeding generations would have been an atrocity to the Earth if the state we had received it in had not been bad enough. That is why the Biomimicry preached by Janine Benyus is extremely important and extremely intelligent. It seems, judging by her several examples in the interview, that nature's organisms have superb god-given methods of sustaining their quality of health and with all of the technology we have developed over the years, the cues we can take from mother nature's creations should be easily integrated into our own.
- Engineering and industry must take examples from nature's own methods of sustainability.
- Instead of recycling local resources and keeping a certain area stable, humans have the habit of traveling to a new, energy rich place, therefore expending much of the planet's "lifeblood" over a greater area.
- Coevolutionary Loops are a necessary piece of the bio security problem and human's ability mistreat it.
- The Biomimicry is slowly taking affect, however in order to create a more supporting environment, many more engineers and designers have to realize it's potential.
A Question of Design
- The Industrial Revolution, as progressive as it was, had been poorly designed, or rather not designed at all, it's negative effects had taken place due to environmental unawareness.
- The Industrial Revolution led to the focusing of populations, and the regression in artisan skills.
- The Industrial Revolution also had caused more production and more affordable goods.
- The early industrialists and designers did not take notice of the grander aspect of the actions, therefore failing to provide the highest efficiency possible.
- The failure of these planners to do their jobs completely resulted in "intergenerational remote tyranny."
Speculative Prehistory of Humanity
- Once again, efficiency is not necessarily found in better forms of energy but it can be found in simple physics.
- "Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival.
- The greatest engineers of the world must retreat from using their minds for "weaponry" and divert to "livingry."
- Humans have some sort of grudge with technology, however only because they don't understand it as the reason they are able to survive on the planet.
The third set of readings seemed to focus on design, not in terms of graphics or fashion, but instead, in terms of industrial planning and objective. The running theme in all three articles was, obviously, sustainability, but mostly, how humans have left sustainability out of the blueprints in order to chase profit or for chauvinistic purpose. It seems as the human race develops new technologies, or makes something bigger and better than that of anything previous to it, the engineers and industrial designers behind such great endeavors focus on moving ahead yet again. In "A Question of Design," McDonough and Braugnart state this failure to create sustainability in terms of architecture and engineering. They say that intergenerational remote tyranny, where industry designers and leaders the world over fail to create a proper method of production, which results in serious problems for future generations. For instance, if we had not attempted to clean up our current methods of energy usage, the environment for our succeeding generations would have been an atrocity to the Earth if the state we had received it in had not been bad enough. That is why the Biomimicry preached by Janine Benyus is extremely important and extremely intelligent. It seems, judging by her several examples in the interview, that nature's organisms have superb god-given methods of sustaining their quality of health and with all of the technology we have developed over the years, the cues we can take from mother nature's creations should be easily integrated into our own.
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