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Carolina Caliaba's Library tagged design →  View Popular

09 Oct 09

Compulsion: Where Object Meets Anxiety: Observatory: Design Observer

  • While scientists can wave their hands and point at a section of the brain where compulsive behavior originates, there is no chart or graph that can describe the emotional investment we make in objects that trigger such behavior.
  • I used to not understand it. I harbored an anger towards my brother, as if his OCD were controlled by a switch that he was too lazy to turn off.
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06 Oct 09

Is There Bauhaus in IKEA?: Observatory: Design Observer

  • I wanted to detect any melodic strains, however faint, of the Bauhaus in the booming marching-band music of IKEA.
  • Ninety years ago, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus on humanistic principles. “Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society,” Gropius reflected in 1962 (Gropius, Walter. “My Conception of the Bauhaus Idea,” Scope of Total Architecture. Ed. Walter Gropius. New York: Colliers, 1962. 6-19). “Our conception of the basic unity of all design in relation to life was in diametric opposition to that of ‘art for art’s sake’ and the much more dangerous philosophy it sprang from, business as an end in itself.”
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untitled

  • STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

    I think this idea first occurred to me
    when I was looking at a marvellous etching of a bull by Picasso. It
    was an illustration for a story by Balzac called The Hidden Masterpiece.
    I am sure that you all know it. It is a bull that is expressed in 12
    different styles going from very naturalistic version of a bull to an
    absolutely reductive single line abstraction and everything else along
    the way. What is clear just from looking at this single print is that
    style is irrelevant. In every one of these cases, from extreme abstraction
    to acute naturalism they are extraordinary regardless of the style.
    It’s absurd to be loyal to a style. It does not deserve your loyalty.
    I must say that for old design professionals it is a problem because
    the field is driven by economic consideration more than anything else.
    Style change is usually linked to economic factors, as all of you know
    who have read Marx. Also fatigue occurs when people see too much of
    the same thing too often. So every ten years or so there is a stylistic
    shift and things are made to look different. Typefaces go in and out
    of style and the visual system shifts a little bit. If you are around
    for a long time as a designer, you have an essential problem of what
    to do. I mean, after all, you have developed a vocabulary, a form that
    is your own. It is one of the ways that you distinguish yourself from
    your peers, and establish your identity in the field. How you maintain
    your own belief system and preferences becomes a real balancing act.
    The question of whether you pursue change or whether you maintain your
    own distinct form becomes difficult. We have all seen the work of illustrious
    practitioners that suddenly look old-fashioned or, more precisely, belonging
    to another moment in time.
  • Thought changes our life and our behaviour. I also believe
    that drawing works in the same way. I am a great advocate of drawing,
    not in order to become an illustrator, but because I believe drawing
    changes the brain in the same way as the search to create the right
    note changes the brain of a violinist. Drawing also makes you attentive.
    It makes you pay attention to what you are looking at, which is not
    so easy.
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That's Right

  • "One pronounced aspect of Victorian design was a great interest in creating the illusion of depth, particularly so with lithographers. Type, vignettes, products and design elements are made to seem multi-layered through the use of shadows, superimposition, dimensional banners and ribbons, turned-up faux page corners and choice of colors.

    Some have labeled this the Gaslight Style approach to design, for example Maurice Rickards: "Said to have derived from the play of lamps on three-dimensional street lettering, i.e. storefront signage, etc. The style appears to have originated in Germany, spreading, through the influence of German printing skills, throughout the world."

    Chief features of the style are heavily three-dimensional lettering with a vigorous rendering of tonal gradation and shadow effects. A characteristic treatment involved the use of a vignetted 'cloud-work' background against which lettering appeared in lighter tone, with heavy shadowing to hold outlines where these overlapped on to plain paper. A wealth of heavy scroll- and strap-work, also rendered in three dimensions, filled in the interstices of the design.

    The style, for which at the time no specific name emerged, is thought to have been inspired by the chiaroscuro effects of gas lighting, and has subsequently received the designation Gaslight Style."
  • Gestalt therapy derives from art history, it proposes you must understand the ‘whole’ before you can understand the details. What you have to look at is the entire culture, the entire family and community and so on. Perls proposed that in all relationships people could be either toxic or nourishing towards one another. It is not necessarily true that the same person will be toxic or nourishing in every relationship, but the combination of any two people in a relationship produces toxic or nourishing consequences. And the important thing that I can tell you is that there is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them.
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