becoming institutionalised / the road to damascus

I wanted to tell a short story about taste development and role [positive and negative] that institutions have to play in the process. But starting with three little kittens is as good a place as any.
My grandparents, like many I expect, used to collect 'objet d'art', knick knacks and ornaments and keep them on the mantelpiece and in a special, glass fronted, unit. My grandfather was particularly fond of three brands of these kind of goods. There is an example of one above from the Franklin Mint. The Franklin Mint usually advertise in the back of the supplement for the Mail on Sunday and each week there would be an image of a either a Georgian Lady on a swing, in soft focus, or a small, dewy eyed boy reclining in a pile of hay and invariably these things would find their way in to the cabinet in my grandparents front room.
I used to love these objects and seem to remember spending a lot of time looking at them - marvelling at the skill and dexterity of the artists.


They were also partial to Lladro figurines and



Porcelain from Limoges in France - although they never managed to acquire anything quite as spectacular as these vases with their magnificent cartouches depicting 'mythological scenes'. My appreciation of these objets was usually accompanied by the tortured crooning of Engelbert Humperdink or P J Proby on the casette player.





For a long time my parent appeared to 'sort of' share these tastes and the odd bit of Lladro would find its way in to our semi-detached new build.



It looked a bit like this only less grand and without the garage.
But then we moved to a house that looked like this:



An Edwardian semi detached house with a pantry and period features, like wood panelling and an authentic bathroom suite. It also had a leaking roof and ice formed on the inside of the windows in the winter. No more banal little semi for us -
With this transition came a marked change in the stuff that we surrounded ourselves with - every Sunday I found myself at an Antiques market - getting something authentic, with character. No more Franklin mint for me.
I'd even lost my taste for Engelbert.
I cannot say that this transition had anything to do with aspiration or an overt desire to be perceived as more sophisticated or clever on the part of my parents - but it was a distinct change. Naturally this had an effect on me - I am sitting in my own home surrounded by mid century modern furniture, Danish light fittings, formica tables [irony!]. I also have gonks and tringlements but they are 'tasteful' and reference working resources that I have seen/liked at places like Barbara Hepworth's studio in St Ives but I shall come to this.



The point here is that my own value system changed and evolved over time - my tastes changed. This may seem like an obvious point but it does reinforce Bourdieu's claim - in a way.
The next phase in terms of my own taste development happened when I went to West Notts.. College of FE - 'the art school'. Again it is an obvious observation but this experience exposed me to stuff/things and ideas that were so far removed from my own experiences that it was bewildering...and seductive. And it is this quasi-religious/erotic element to institutional art school education that I would like to briefly look at.

Martin Parr

Martin Parr's documentary photography.
Martin Parr has consistently produced work that highlights the frailties of the British working class, perhaps?. This may be a crude description of the work - but I cannot help but feel ambivalent/troubled by the way of looking. We are presented with lurid images that seem to present a particular stance on the part of the photographer - is this sneering contempt or genuine empathy? there is a focus in Parr's work on the 'taste' of the subject - his clever use of objects/signs that connect you to the subject on both a personal and political level. Roland Barthes would call this the studium and the punctum, twin mechanisms by which we are enabled to 'read' an image - but there is inevitably an element of taste at play here and it is bound in to the culture and politics of the photographer and the viewer.

Class, Bourdieu and Mitford

Taste and class.
Below a sketch featuring the Two Ronnies and John Cleese. In a way it is one way to explore the notion of Cultural Capital and the relationship between Social class and judgements of taste put forward by Pierre Bourdieu in his seminal work Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste



Bourdieu said:
“Whereas the ideology of charisma regards taste in a legitimate culture as a gift of nature, scientific observation shows that cultural needs are the product of upbringing and education: surveys establish that all cultural practices [museum visits, concert going, reading etc] and preferences in literature, painting or music, are closely liked to educational level [measured by qualifications or length of schooling] and secondarily to social origin"



Bonjour Pierre!

So Bourdieu describes the acquisition of certain preferences as a result of upbringing and education. Interestingly - John Cleese's character, the impoverished Upper Class Male states that he has 'innate breeding [but no money!]. His claim being that his inherent superiority is hereditary - inborn, and arguably his taste [which will also be superior in every way], is natural and the result of genes. The idea of innate-ness [although not necessarily linked to Social class] runs counter to Bourdieu's theory of acquired Cultural Capital. The phrase Cultural Capital is well worn now and it is commonly accepted as the theory that best reflects how an individual develops, ideas, preferences and taste. Innate-ness is loaded with a class history and, at its heart, suggests that those in-bred qualities cannot be bought/read about/acquired through education or a set of favourable circumstances. When Ronnie Corbett, as the quintessential working class man, says "I know my place" he certainly does. However Bourdieu claims that Cultural Capital is learnt, that there is no such thing as innate-ness. He belongs to the 'accident of birth' camp which suggests that had Elizabeth Windsor been born on a council estate in the black country, to a working class family not only would her accent have been completely different, but her sense of purpose, superiority, duty and taste [so do I]. So, does this also mean that taste is learned? it would suggest so.



What is also apparent in the sketch is an element of aspiration on the part of the character who represents the middle classes, Ronnie Barker, - the arriviste. This debate was illustrated in the article produced by Nancy Mitford in the 1950s describing 'linguistic' differences the U and not U [the U here standing for the Upper Classes] where social breeding [not innate-ness] is typified by a certain use of language for instance saying what? instead of pardon? and calling a fireplace a chimney-piece. It outlined a difference - the working classes being largely neglected form this particular discussion. So aspiration, the appropriation of language, behaviour and perhaps more particularly from our point of view objects/images/things that describe an approach to taste and therefore locate us in terms of our class and social standing.

So taste can perhaps be learned, can perhaps be acquired, can also be appropriated and adopted. Taste can become an affectation or badge to distinguish us from or align us with a particular social group.

Stephen Bayley on taste and class:
"Taste is a merciless betrayer of social and cultural attitudes"

Taste and Duchamp

The subject for the first Key ideas symposium this year is taste.

We will be using this opportunity to examine ideas around the notion of taste. This is one of the things that Stephen Bayley has to say about it:

“Everyone has taste and yet it is a more taboo subject than sex or money. The reason for this is simple. Claims about your attitudes to or achievements in the carnal or financial arenas can be disputed only by your lover and your financial advisors, whereas by making a statement about your taste you expose body and soul to terrible scrutiny”

Bayley.S, P.13 General Knowledge, Booth Clibborn Editions [2000]

Taste – or personal visual and aesthetic preference - is a contentious and difficult subject to tackle head on. We realized this at a previous Key Ideas symposium when a ‘light’ element of the overall discussion around Image became the dominant talking point. It was apparent that Stephen Bayley’s assertion that Taste is a problematic subject was correct. The discussion that developed ranged broadly across a variety of cultural assumptions, issues around social class, politics and aesthetics. It was impassioned and well informed but inconclusive and has prompted us to make Taste the subject for today’s discussion and activities. The aim of the symposium is to firstly talk about Taste and its development as an idea and secondly to ask all participants to consider what this thing Taste is, where is comes from and what it means. Everybody in the room is connected to design, in most cases as practitioners and cannot help but apply a personal sensibility to the processes that we engage in. Taste plays a part in everything that we do, everything that we buy, everything that we produce, it is integral to our visual lives and therefore worthy of further scrutiny.

This is Marcel Duchamp talking about his approach to taste and Art. I wonder who the laymen who are so desperate to be pleased are? So, Marcel Duchamp equates being pleased or deriving pleasure with Taste. Is Duchamp here signalling his distaste for vulgar pleasure seeking in Art - his indifference could be interpreted as the ultimate disaffected 'pose'. Suggesting that to offer an opinion one way or the other is beneath his dignity or perhaps that the obvious and crude desire for pleasure is the terrain of those less refined or sophisticated. This, broadly speaking, describes a notion put forward by Bourdieu - sublimation.

"The denial of lower, coarse, vulgar, venal, servile - in a word, natural - enjoyment which consitutes the sacred sphere of culture, implies an affirmation of the superiority of those who can be satisfied with the sublimated, refined, disinterested, gratuitous, distinguished pleasures forever closed to the profane. That is why art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfil a social function of legitimating social difference"

Ah,ha another old chestnut…

Graphic Designers, often like to assert their skill, training, taste and 'eye' by claiming moral high-ground in being able to identify and associate with 'better' cuts or digital versions of fonts. Two classic fonts that have become ubiquitous with the PC and Mac are Arial and Helvetica.

Some background information — provided by
http://ilovetypography.com/2007/10/06/arial-versus-helvetica/

Helvetica
Designed in 1957 by Max Miedinger, Helvetica’s design is based on that of Akzidenz Grotesk (1896), and classified as a Grotesque or Transitional san serif face. Originally it was called Neue Haas Grotesque; in 1960 it was revised and renamed Helvetica (Latin for Switzerland “Swiss”).

Arial
Designed in 1982 by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders for Monotype (not Microsoft), it’s classified as Neo Grotesque, was originally called Sonoran San Serif, and was designed for IBM’s bitmap font laser printers. It was first supplied with Windows 3.1 (1992) and was one of the core fonts in all subsequent versions of Windows until Vista, when to all intents and purposes, it was replaced with Calibri.

In the 'soft copy' digital age, is this argument or plain snobbery redundant?

TYPOGRAPHY NOW

It is almost twenty years since Rick Poyner & Edward Booth Clibborn released Typography Now. A publication which has enjoyed several re-prints and certainly for a number of years was a source of inspiration to students of Graphic Design and typography.

The early 1990s represented the real emergence and integration of Computer platforms and software page layout programs into the design process. This new technology was stretched (as was some of the type of the era) in a spirit of unabashed experimentation and expression. The restraint of previous eras and the technologies they worked on, were challenged. INdeed many of the trades and crafts associated with page layout for printed outcomes were seriously challenged.

Some ten years after Typography Now Ellen Lupton summarised in her essay Fluid Mechanics: Typographic Design Now*, that as a society and specifically communications industry, we were in an era of 'soft copy'. An expression Lupton observed was defined by Nicholas Negroponte and Muriel Cooper working at MIT’s Media Lab, as far back as 1978. “Soft copy,” referred to the linguistic raw material of the digital age. The bastard offspring of hard copy, soft text lacks a fixed typographic identity. Owing allegiance to no font or format, it is willingly pasted, pirated, output, or re-purposed in countless contexts. It is the ubiquitous medium of word-processing, desk-top publishing, e-mail, and the Internet.

This digital age has, we can see from recent developments such as the iPhone and iPad now become event further complex in terms of the nature of the soft copy now being able to be adjusted beyond the point of receipt by the end user. So in some sense, has the designer gone the way of the typesetter?

Is the designer's role being redefined, perhaps more closely akin to editors?

* published in Donald Albrecht, Steven Holt, and Ellen Lupton, Design Culture Now: National Design Triennial. New York: Princeton Architectural Press and Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, 2000.

Ah,ha the old chestnut…

So, here we go, how many typefaces should we work with?
How many is enough?
Want to hear Massimo Vignelli's — seven minute — take on it?

http://bigthink.com/ideas/19591

I Love Typography

Returning from a recent trip to Berlin, I realise that, €36 lighter of pocket, I have once again indulged my compulsive obsession with typography. Three editions of Typographic Journal slanted in my bag, within three minutes — why?. Approximately 160 pages in each edition — 480 odd pages of stuff dedicated to type — I may never read all of them!
Is it for inspiration? Is it to inspire others? Some of the articles are in German, a language I can't get to grips with, BUT I can appreciate the careful crafting of individual letter forms in groups called words, in very close relationships with one another in sentences. This is something learned with metal and wood type in letterpress at Newcastle Polytechnic — in the first year when Mac SEs arrived and later at Central Saint Martins, at the time of Typography Now. Somehow this sense of crafting with type has remained intact through almost twenty years of digital based work.
Is it right for the new era?

http://www.slanted.de/

http://www.ilovetypography.com/

Image and Consumption

This is Tim Westwood aka 'Big Dawg', Radio 1 DJ and son of the Anglican Bishop of Peterborough, deceased. He has just done his shopping at Tesco and in his twittered words was "just gettin my shop on - big ballin and shop callin!". Tim was brought up in Norfolk and attended the Norwich School, one of the oldest and most prestigious schools in the country. Arguably Tim's image, his appropriation of a culture which is not his own, including vernacular speech, clothing, the spinners on the wheels of his very pimped up ride is a construct.

We are here looking at an image of Tim Westwood, selected by him to go on his Twitter site - in itself this is interesting because it is possible to 'read' the picture - this is deliberate we are meant to be able to read it. Big Dawg is quite clearly telling us that he is part of Hip Hop culture and he needs a lot of Loo rolls.

This is Tim eating one of his favourite breakfasts, waffles. Note the products featured in the background, Aunt Jemma's buttermilk waffle mix and maple syrup. I am not sure if Tim set this photograph up deliberately or not - it is unlikely, but what is interesting are the objects and products that surround him, that he identifies with, that go some way towards describing him.

Tim Westwood is an extreme example but the question we are exploring is to what extent are we defined by the images that we consume - I have chosen to include objects and products because they could be constituent parts of a bigger picture/image. Tim Westwood clearlymakes very deliberate choices - his decisions are considered and very particular, he definitely surrounds himself with stuff that amplifies the image that he wants to project. Additionally we are thinking about the extent to which the cultural shift from words to pictures has enabled these readings and altered the way that we consume.

Platforms like Twitter and Facebook are examples of this shift perhaps, enabling anybody with a digital camera and home computer to quickly construct an open and globally available [visual] persona in minutes. Easy to maintain and update the online identity can be changed and evolved rapidly, adapting to trend changes describing recent experiences - projecting out to the world the individuals experiences/taste/preferences or favourite things. But perhaps more indicative of the desire to articulate a set of ideas visually, to project a visual identity, particularly for designers, is the blogosphere - this aspect of online culture has become one of the major ways that we can express ideas/opinions - show the world what we like/dislike - describe our unique visual perception - display our network of connections and monitor our/our ideas popularity in the process. It is an environment which encourages discussion and encouragement for the blogger and some more successful sites have become arbiters of taste providing the signpost to vistas of new visual experience for hungry followers.

And everything that we see is reproduced, our experience here is via the mediated image. All design practitioners, graphic designers, product and object makers and illustrators use the medium [and the subsequent mediated imagery] to talk about their ideas/interest/identity - the imagery that we select and 'publish' to promote these facets of our practice are, arguably, key - so, in the image saturated world, who regulates this process? I suspect that we are both passive consumer and image retailer in one and the proliferation of image in our culture is an inevitable consequence of the development of technology - will it shift our means of communication permanently and as designers and visual communicators what part do we/should we play in that process?

Image and Taste

So, Otto Neurath known primarily for the development of Isotype, a "method of showing social, technological, biological and historical connections in pictorial form" and the desire to create a system of Universal Silhouettes in an attempt to produce a Visual Language that communicated Universally - his claim that word separate and pictures unite is an interesting one if, as David Crow suggests, the system is fundamentally a linguistic one and relies on the viewers ability to create visual sentences from the 'grapheme' like icons. This may seem unrelated to the broader argument of image and taste. However Neurath's project was an attempt to bypass the 'problem' of Art, its readability and the necessity for prior knowledge and [cultural] education to understand what was being said. Bourdieu [cultural capital] claimed that our ability to understand the image was not innate but the result of upbringing, so [good]'taste', the sensibility/understanding and acquired cultural capital, is something that can be learned/owned by those priviledged with access to the 'right' kind of experiences. This suggests that taste generally is dependent on social class? This also suggests that how images are read is dependent on class related sensibilities.

So taste:

This is the front page of the clothing company Old Town's web site. It is interesting to look at, Old Town specialise in sourcing old clothing patterns and recreate them - the garments invariably are re-makes of workers clothing although some are more refined with names like Fitzrovia.

The 'Fitrovia'.

When Stephen Hayward spoke at the last key ideas symposium he mentioned the 'aesthetisization of labour' - Old Town arguably typifies a taste for clothing that signifies something - it is retrospective, indicative of a 'lost' quality, perhaps.

The Front page of Labour and Wait's web site - a similar visual flavour - utilitarian, austere and institutional. At Labour and Wait you can buy things like this:

A school writing tablet?

I generally find myself liking the things at Labour and Wait, but it is interesting to think about why, as a shop it is an astute exercise in the curation of nostalgia - although it is a kind of nostalgia that is not really true, there is a apparent authenticity and 'quality' to the products, Breton sweaters, workers smocks, enamelled Japanese coffee pots, Brady bags, brands that have been around for a long time, we are conscious of the lineage....somehow, without really having an actual recollection or direct experience of them. Perhaps I think that I am making an educated choice, perhaps I respond well to the almost niche nature of the shop; I subscribe to its ambience and image because I think that it reflects well on me?

This is a spread from a book produced by Sara Fanelli - a very talented Illustrator. She has produced numerous childrens books - it is difficult to ascertain exactly how commercially successful these books are - however they represent a type of work that is the acceptable face of a world that is driven by the commercial 'bottom line'.

A spread from a book by Michael Foreman, a very successful children's book Illustrator - for the sake of comparison.

Taste is a contentious topic, particularly for designers. We spend time cultivating a sensibility, seeking out imagery/objects/things that we find interesting and inspiring, things that become part of our identity, beacons of our taste. Often guarding these 'things' closely, synthesizing and processing them and releasing them in to the world piecemeal, tantalising visual sweetmeats that describe a sophistication in our thinking. So the question is about how and why we make taste decisions. Kant claimed that our taste in images and things was innate, we would say genetic, nature not nurture, Bourdieu that it is a symptom of our experiences and education, nurture not nature - the latter is probably the popular and most commonly accepted view. Stephen Bayley, in his book 'Taste. The Secret Meaning of Things', claims that taste is a bigger social taboo than sex or money and that "making statements about taste expose body and soul to terrible scrutiny". So Thinking about Neurath's notion of division and unification and the issue of image and taste - it is interesting to explore the rationale that we employ [or not] for what we decide to like/dislike, perhaps to think about what sits behind those choices and whether images will ever unite.

Key Ideas: Image

Key Ideas: Image discusses our understanding of the image in its many forms; from its role as signifier of status and thing to be consumed to barometer of good taste and vehicle for communication. It is trite to say that images are everywhere – that their effect is unfathomable and that our experience of them is virtually uninterrupted so; Key Ideas: Image will attempt to address the multiple readings of imagery in contemporary society, exploring the image via three themes:

Image and Taste/ The social and cultural associations & readings of imagery, Image and Consumption/How we curate our identities through the consumption and creation of images, Image and Aesthetics /The role of beauty in image-making...

Image and Taste – The social and cultural associations & readings of imagery.

“Whereas the idealogy of charisma regards taste in legitimate culture as a gift of nature, scientific observation shows that cultural needs are the product of upbringing and education”

Bourdieu, P. Distinction – a Social critique of the judgement of Taste, Routledge and Kegan, 1984, p.1]

We learnt in the ‘Object’ symposium that our terms of reference for the ‘readings’ of images and objects is borrowed from the study of language [linguistics] and signs [semiotics] and that images like objects are a ‘kind’ of speech. However Otto Neurath said that "Words separate" "Pictures unite". Neurath’s idealised/systematised modernism suggests a solution to the problem of qualitative readings of images, and an attempt to transcend the hierarchy of perception that is synonymous with Western Visual Culture. In a world where choice of image and matters of taste are part of complex social and cultural hierarchies do images really unite or do they atomize?

Image and Consumption – How we curate our identities through the consumption and creation of images.

“Images come to us more than we go to them” – [paraphrased from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing.]

“The trend of all mass media is toward the visual – from the fairly recent replacement of the cash register in fast food chains and cafeterias with computers with icons and keys, to the proliferation of computer games”

Seward Barry, A.M. Visual Intelligence – Perception, Image and manipulation in Visual Communication, New York: State University of New York Press, 1997

Arguably the proliferation of transmitted and broadcast imagery has shifted the emphasis in mass culture away from the word towards the image.

To what extent are we defined by the imagery that we consume and in an image-saturated world how much choice do we really have?

Image and Aesthetics - The role of beauty in image-making...

Aesthetics [its numerous readings and misappropriations] and the idea of the viewer’s sensibility, or gaze, has been the subject of Artistic and Philosophical debate since the 18^th Century. Aesthetic, the word, can mean: "to perceive, to feel," and according to Immanuel Kant: "the science which treats of the conditions of sensuous perception."

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper

Bourdieu claims that our ability to read/appreciate/quantify an image or object is the result of ‘upbringing and education’ but Kant argued that there were Universalities – things that everybody agreed were ‘beautiful’. As designers and image makers we all have very different sensibilities, very different ideas of what is and is not ‘beautiful’, in short a unique and particular aesthetic.

Where does communication/function end and seduction begin? Who decides on beauty and is the notion of direct communication in commercial image making redundant?

The Camberwell Design Cluster Key Ideas - Object symposium will take place on Wednesday November 11th. Speakers include curator of the recent Telling Tales exhibition at the V&A Gareth Williams, artist Neil Cummings, designer Ralph Ball, design historian Stephen Hayward and editor of Crafts magazine Grant Gibson. The day will include a screening of the new film from the makers of Helvetica, entitled Objectified, which reveals the methods and people behind the design of everyday objects.

Utter nonsense

This film forms part of the cannon of BMW vanity projects. The notion is that you commission an eminent artists to 'paint' the shell of the car. It is described as a 'difficult and demanding job'. The rationale given by the artists is at best flimsy: 'I wanted it to look good in the daytime' for instance. It flags up an inability to describe the structure in thinking, the reason for the selected imagery seems arbitrary/random, perhaps with the exeption of David Hockney who wanted to take away the surface and see the inside of the car on the outside, an indication of his mawkish sentimentality about cubism and Pablo perhaps? These artists were commissioned because of their fame and renown at the time, a shrewd investment by the motoring giant no doubt. Beyond this the reason for the work is sketchy. Style over communication?

The true avant garde? Rhythm 23 by Hans Richter.



More extraordinary imagery from Alejandro Jodorowsky a polymorph genius/madman.

Touching Cloth

This is Holy Mountain. Truly avant-garde?

This is war in 2030 according to E McKnight Kauffer. This image was one of nine produced by McKnight Kauffer in response to 'The World in 2030 A.D.' written by the conservative politician FE Smith (Earl of Birkenhead). some quotes:

'In 2030 women will still use men as the media by which
their greatest triumphs are wrought; they will still be able,
by their wit and charms, to direct the activities of the
most able men towards heights which they could
never otherwise hope to achieve.'
ouch!

"If the next century is tranquil and prosperous,
life in 2030 will be adorned by cultured and urbane
amenities in excess of the pleasant accompaniments
which our contemporary civilisation can exhibit."



Witness the Future of the Avant Garde. This is the subject of our next key ideas debate.

'Early morning' [1825] by Samuel Palmer.
Vivid, intense and extraordinary, Palmer's sepia ink landscape drawings are his attempt to describe the majesty of creation. There is a manner of visual description that he is developing here, a stylised language that is both naturalistic and abstracted. The treatment of organic form is systematic, creating a 'patchwork' of texture/pattern/line. Unpicking and rationalising the information, representing it in a semi-abstracted way, stylising but communicating.

style over communication

“There has never been any design without style”

David Pye, in his book The Nature and Aesthetics of Design, explains that, “ shape, for us, is what gives individuality to things. All of us are extremely expert in recognising the individual. Character of shape in closely similar things, such as human faces and hands of writing, the individuality of shapes is the stuff of art, whether in design, painting, or any other field.”

We learn to become extremely sensitive to these differences.

These three houses are generic models of their particular time yet all stand out clearly as belonging to a particular style.

(Georgian terrace, Victorian terrace, 30s semi)

Indeed when people try to mimic style it can go strangely wrong

(neo Georgian house)

miffy from 'miffy's birthday' and 'miffy at the art gallery' by dick bruna

It can even go wrong when someone tries to imitate their own style old and new miffy, Mr Nencini would now direct you to examine the ears, shape of the head, feet and size and quality of the mouth. Where is the wabi sabi?

Shaker chair , boxes, tools and storage hooks

The Shakers (United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing) by all accounts a particularly modest bunch, it is suggested that they might become upset if buttons on their clothes got too exuberant, they designed their objects with a minimum of expression, yet still made furniture that stands out as designed by certain people at certain time period. You could argue that they do not have a style but a design methodology, it only became a style later when it was imitated. People buying into the look but with out the religion. Likewise with minimalism the tenets of which travel from art to architecture to some watered down expression meaning white walls rather than wallpaper

John Pawson London appartment 1984 & somewhere claiming to be a minimalist interior
So even though they tried to ignore style inevitably they created one. Some others are not so reticent

Here we have some work by the architect and designer Zaha Hadid, shoes for shoe label Mellissa, aura sculpture for the 2008 venice biennale based on the theories of palladio, interior shot of proposed opera house in dubai, Nekton stools. It seems though her style is her design method, so much so that its elasticity knows no bounds. In that she can move freely from architecture, art, furniture and clothing with the same fluid movements.

Her ‘style’ has become a self promotional tool, it is fairly recognisable and I guess if you commission her you kind of know what you are in for, she could be described as a vending machine in Alan Fletcher terms as mentioned in the design process debate, but maybe she has a point.

As Peter Dormer describes: “ artists do not need to be in tune with societies values (on the contrary much art criticises or subverts those values), but it is essential for designers to be in sympathy with the times, or to at least echo them, because much of the designers usefulness to a manufacturer is in his or her ability to identify current popular taste”




Barcelona chair Mies van der Rohe
Stephen Bayley believes that if you review the history of design and the opinions of those that have written about it, it seems that, there are agreements in approach to design.
And although the style of an object may differ, the items that stick out and become admired by successive generations have certain qualities in common, which he believes to be:
an intelligibility;
a coherence and harmony between form and detail;
an appropriate choice of materials to the function
and an intelligent equation between construction and purpose, with available technology exploited to full.

caveman club?

I suppose years ago a caveman/woman designed through necessity chose furs on their thermal insulation properties, picked up sticks and tested them for there ability to crack bison skulls
later we he/she was preoccupied in preserving food; less than 100 years ago preserving foodstuffs was still of primary importance to health, nutrition, longevity and ultimately survival.
Today our primary concern is not to find a solution to the method of preserving foodstuffs, but the colour of that solution, is it available in a brushed stainless steel finish
So what do you do? go for the solution you want, in the style that most suits your own.

style = choice (?)

MOD DOT COM

Eek. Comments to come.


Just stockpiling pictures for next week...

Techniques at a Party

By Saul Steinberg, subject of a current show at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Comments to come...

The Stylist

In three-dimensional design, the style over communication issue might be read as style over functionality, or usability.
Early industrial designers in America were dismissed as 'mere stylists' by their Bauhaus-influenced European counterparts because their role often involved only the design of the external skin of the product, and did not consider its internal workings. However, when functionality and complex components are reduced to a minimum in the design of, say, a fruit bowl, as opposed to a camera, the intuitive, formal aspects of design (“styling”) naturally become the focus of the designer’s activity. Conversely when the object becomes too complex for one person to grasp (as with car design) the division of labour results in the designer's role again being reduced towards the 'cosmetic'.

Our next subject for discussion is 'style over communication'. The 'issue' of style is a sticky one for designers of all hue's but particularly Illustrators. Those of you studying at Camberwell will know that the 's' word has become virtually outlawed because of its association with momentary trends/aimless uses of particular, fashionable technology/superficiality and a lack of rigour in process. We have chosen to supplant this word with an idea of visual language. Perhaps it is time to revisit this thing called style, the thing that we associate with individual designers and practitioners. The thing that [sometimes] helps identify ways of thinking/making/producing with a period in time and to see if it is indeed in conflict with an idea of communication or if it operates in tandem with the ebb and flow of visual language development.