A Partial Definition

I dislike defining things for a few reasons:
First: I feel as though definitions often pin down ideas or concepts that, like butterflies do not often survive the act of the pin, or definition.
Second:... their "definitive" nature does not mesh well with the unintended, the unexpected, or the unattainable.

w/e, I'm probably just beating a dead horse with this.

Moving on.

There is no industrial design. Industrial design is a series of complementary skills and problem solving techniques that all contribute to the development and refinement of products, ideas, services, systems, and experiences. Industrial design is not an entity "thing" in itself. (I think this is largely why it often feels like a meaningless expression).

Industrial design should not privilege one prized technique or approach over another. The conversation should not be solely about form, or aesthetics, or product semantics, ergonomics, function, expression or rich experiences. the conversation should pick what it wants to from these established discussions to help find the more appropriate solution to the situation at hand. (situation, not problem) The dialogue between designers and the rest of the world should contribute to the increased situational knowhow and apply its own processes to its own processes.

Industrial design should not be anything, and it should not function separated from the world of situations.

I suppose my only mandate for ID is that it should stay connected to the situation at hand, but have the strength to move across any boundary in search of more appropriate solutions. I don't know... Maybe I'm just being vague, but I really don't want ID to pigeon hole anyone or anything.

The short version is good too: "Toasters, door handles, shoes, ... the future"

RFS Bucky Fou

I think it is very difficult to dislike Buckminster Fuller. The guy had an amazing genius, but as Matt has pointed out, got in his own way of success. I can see the allure of design by science, of beauty by accident, and many other novel approaches that Buckminster Fuller took to reach and partially realize his concepts, but I think that some of his best concepts, or indeed future visions addressed "Spaceship Earth"

Bucky realized that we could tap the potential of the energy of the earth by way of harnessing the immense cosmic energies that constantly bombard the earth. He recognized that in order to succeed in this we must approach education in a completely different way, and practically ignore the stupid squabbles that surround political systems today.

This approach still appalls to my optimistic and naive sensibilities, but my practical brain thinks that although the vision is still completely valid, the means of achieving that vision are still completely obscured.

This is a common problem I feel. A wonderful vision and no clear way to reach it.

RFS Robert Venturi - 1966

This essay argues for vitality in design. It rebels against then conventional minimalism under the slogan of "more is not less" (against Mies van der Rhoe's "less is more"

Venturi argues for a style that relates to the complexity of modern life, in a way that relates to, "the richness and ambiguity of the modern experience." Venturi asks designers to not be intimidated by pressures to needlessly simplify and should instead shoot for rich and meaningful experiences.

I like this approach. It has many appealing aspects that I believe are necessary today. For instance, a simple digital experience tends to release the user from the trends that assault ones eyes, and generally cause a headache. That same minimal digital experience often leads to a boring and uninteresting or meaningless series of interactions that ultimately dull the human experience. By at least attempting to achieve a meaningful experience a designer can then enrich the experience in a way the compliments the overall function of the human experience and not only the function of the minimal digital exchanges that occur thousands of times a second.

I suppose in order to pull this off on a large scale, it is necessary to always have enough time and effort to dedicate to what others would interpret as unnecessary frills on an experience.

Does the human experience need simplicity? expedience, usefulness, aesthetics, and intuitiveness yes... but simplicity?

RFS Henry Dreyfuss "Joey"

Dreyfuss does did many things in his professional practice that lent well to the development of all kinds of newly considered elegant solutions to design problems. He singularly pushed the realm of industrial design into a new blanket consideration of the human form and how we interact with our environment.

Dreyfuss seemed amazingly proud of his company's investigation and development of Joe and Josephine, his two super average humans. I appreciate how he made an attempt to use empirical methods to develop the worlds most average humans along not only scale and proportion, but also on color choice, sound aesthetics, and the environment that people and products live in.

I had the chance to read IDEO's human centered design guide, and I can easily find many similarities between the approach that Dreyfuss used and the new contemporary emphasis on human interaction and environment. I suppose the major difference there is in the overall approach, wherein Dreyfuss would conduct many measurement based observation methods along the lines of a new observers, versus IDEO's adaptation where the users themselves use their intuition to almost design the solution themselves. In this approach the designer becomes a facilitator of process as opposed to the designer that interprets experiments and then dictates the overall designing. I suppose this is the difference between constant feedback + teamwork, and designer as official interpreter and arbiter.

RFS MAYA

I have not developed a full opinion on Raymond Loewy, his approach to design and in a larger sense his entire approach to running his business intrigue me quite a bit. I can appreciate his overall marketing approach that prizes the looks of an product, and I can justify his success in relation to the era that he worked in. If the entire world was hideous and technologically new, I would seek to address the aesthetic as well. I can appreciate his adaptations of products to further a particular marketing scheme, and also add function and simple utility to ease of use factors. In most all respects I admire the way he capitalized on dominant market forces to indeed bend America's aesthetic to his will.

Through reading an excerpt on Loewys company marketing observations, I have distinguished some really interesting pieces of obvious but insightful bits.

First, I can readily agree with his observations on certain "design gaps" that exist between teenagers, adults and the elderly. Loewy adds a few interesting observations, namely on the resilience of design changes between these distinct groups. He uses the words conventional and radical to describe design changes that appeal to these groups. The elderly do not necessarily wish to change every piece of their lives as much as a young person, but at the same time "The older age groups are influenced increasingly by the style opinion of the teen age group"

Other pieces of obvious logic exist in his observations of the resilience of large markets against large design, but also that the same large group may be influenced by a small company taking a risk in the market. These notions of design risk in proportion to the company size and market share certainly add another filter to how I interpret design on store shelves, but also add another design target that I have not been fully introduced to.

I suppose this new lens would communicate how to approach the needs of the company in defining a design goal.

Raymond Loewy, I will call on you again....

That Other Thing.

Life in my college has taken me on many twists and turns, from getting my bike wheels stolen, to becoming involved in redefining the schools emphasis in art and design, or to accidentally creating a student group. Lately the campus has turned once again.

A decision to close certain historically underprivileged offices has in turn threatened the confidence and optimism of the school, as well as threaten the yearlong planning efforts to steer the college in new directions.

These issues have risen from a profound lack of communication between the student constituents, the faculty voters, and the administrators that seek to bind the school together through prosperity.

Maybe this has occurred because of conflicting definitions of prosperity, or the degree to which the campus should be "together" to ensure prosperity. Or even in the case of one faculty member, the unplanned expansion of enrollment that has lead to the resource guarding of various departments.

Whatever the underlying issues, as a student, I am compelled to wonder how the juggling act of running the school has ended in a pile of mess on the floor. This is my perception as of right now.

My fractured logic has lead to this:
The communication of the vision for the schools future has not reached the students, the faculty or the steering committees in a way that instills confidence in the vision, or in the future.

There is a snotty technique that people use to avoid this kind of conflict: they insist that everything is not only o.k. but on the road to unimagined prosperity. This method is not lying, but is instead an extremely optimistic approach to a problem whose scale might elude conventional logic. I see this mode of communication in how governments communicate to their people. It does not work when prosperity does not come, and citizens begin to ask the tough and thorough questions that mandate a changing of the guard, and make giving second chances a criminal act.

Unfortunately, my college has provoked a response in its actions that begins to ask those tough questions in a way that reflects poorly on everyone.

If the admins cannot reconcile the disparate personalities and begin to communicate confidence, competence, and community, then they will have squandered their currency in those things.

Nothing is as valuable as optimism, and reputation.

We must maintain these things on all levels to become, in the words of bill and ted, "excellent"

This is my perception right now.

A Response to "Lame" at risd

I have decided that this rumination does not need to be stored, but instead called back on a regular basis.

The other day, my professor addressed class on the subject of lame. The talk resonated with me not only for its content, but also what it implies about my college and the people that work within it. The basic definition of "lame" is when the end result of an effort begins to merge with the pathetic, sad, or woefully uninspired dearth of creativity. The only acceptable way to get away with doing something lame is the full awareness of it. I find it interesting that the only accepted place for the lame is when there is an imbalance of effort that results in something awesome, somewhere. What does it mean when we as a school embrace this imbalance as an excuse to justify a poor or lame effort? Granted, all kinds of people go to school for different reasons. I might be in school only to exist within my focus, and completely disregard all other aspects of an education that I am paying for. Or I might have completely detached from my education in the final throws of the semester and have shifted my focus towards finding a job.

I reject the common assertion that given a particular dislike of the teacher, I will commit zero effort to the class. Becoming frustrated with a particular teacher establishes two things: first, that this is yet another person that I do not get along with, and second, that in order to get the most out of my learning environment I should endeavor to influence the teacher to conduct the class in a way that jives with my learning style. If I am feeling at all charitable, I will continue in my efforts to adjust the learning environment for the benefit of future students.

A failure to take full advantage of a class is like going to a five star restaurant and then leaving having only eaten bread.

The social good side of me hurts inside when I see others detach from their work, and intentionally or unintentionally strike a lame note. This means that they do not value the education in the way that I do, and that (in my eyes) their detachment has diminished the overall quality of the work and therefore the school.

My selfish side is not as bothered by the shoddy effort of my peers, because first it means that my effort shines through and reflects better on me, and second, that the professor can spend more time teaching someone that actually cares than attempting to reach out to the less involved students.

It is the job of the professor to teach to the widest range of their students in an effort to make sure that the overall quality of the class rises (among other things). I applaud teachers that take the extra effort to seek out and mentor students out of the goodness of their hearts, but I do believe that beyond a certain point, spending extra effort on a particular student truly becomes extra. The time of a professor should be spent teaching the students en masse, not individually.

aw crap.

I wanted to talk about competence and the dunning-kruger effect.

I'll do that another time.

I suppose that once again, life is about balance. The ability to balance work and play, or effort across my classes, or my girlfriend. I have previously spoken to people about how it is impossible to reach a unified perfection in anything and how one can only strive for a more perfect solution to something. In this case: a more perfect balance between the discrete elements of life.

It pleases me to see my professors constantly searching for a more perfect balance or solution. This approach validates the nature of any exploratory activity and encourages students to likewise search for, and strive toward the more perfect. It pains me to see professors, administrators or staff wallow in the routine of how things have always been done, or what has been proven to work. Furthermore, when staff arrive at a so-so solution and do not pursue a more perfect or appropriate solution I begin to cringe. Finding the solution to the problem you have not quite faced yet is what defines excellence.

damn, look at me all philosophical and shit.

I hate these kinds of platitudes, but sometimes they work. right now, they work for me.

Philosophies of Chairs and Interfaces

This counts as a rumination

Furniture Designers Are Shifting Focus

In the course of reading my daily dose of news I came across this article on whether the world needs another chair, or a review of the Milan Furniture Fair. The review takes a pretty hard line against frivolous design and ornament without a justification for existence. Adolf Loos made a similar set of observations in 1910 (thank you industrial design reader) In Loos's essay "Ornament and Crime," he makes an argument that equates ornament with crime. among many sensationalist ramblings on tattoos and the criminal mind, Loos observes, or remarks first:

Woe betide the writing desk that has to be changed as frequently as an evening dress just because the style has become unbearable.

and

A consumer who owns furnishings witch become unbearable to him after only ten years and who is therefore forced to buy furniture every ten years is preferable to one who only buys and objet for himself once the old one can no longer be used. Industry demands it. Millions of people are employed because of this rapid change.

The NYT piece descibes a shift where instead of making furniture look good designers have moved on to new approaches:

As for tackling the emotional challenge, one approach is to design products that are unique, or seem to be so. ...he edgy Belgian design gallery, is to exhibit a series of objects, whose form alters according to where they are and how they are treated.

Perhaps this is the beginning of a trend toward the reconsideration of the interfaces of objects via technology. An interesting future indeed.

(RFS) An Amalgamation of Concepts

Henry Ford: 1928

Design has produced increased efficiency but has not improved the drudgery of women. Machinery has been binding the world together through system. This system should be harnessed to help the development of the human body, as well as the tackling the study of the fundamental problems of human life.

Freud: 1930

Technical application of machines has established definite control over nature. Power over nature is not the only goal of human happiness. Every tool we create perfects our own organs and brings us closer to understanding of our god like nature.

Calkins: 1932

Planned obsolescence helps drive economies by engineering the understanding of consumers.

And that is all I have time for at the moment.

(RFS) The Raven

In addition to a highly productive life of weirdness, Le Corbusier wrote on the similarity of automobiles to the parthenon.

He uses these examples to illustrate the role of standardisation in design thinking.

Beginning with the definition that "standards are a matter of logic, analysis, and minute study..." Le Corbusier moves toward the problem of perfection; or the problem of the perfect standard.

Le Corbusier likens the development of standards in the pursuit of perfection to the birth of a unified style that follows distinct rational elements and heralds the emergence of the "essential."

He uses an interesting word to describe the refuse produced in the pursuit of the essential. He calls it the "essential overplus" that either manifests itself in the form of decoration (for the peasant) or proportion (for the civilized man).

I find it interesting that Le Corbusier makes room for ornament but puts it on the same plane as proportion.

I would agree that ornament will always exist, as will proportion, but I had not thought to think about it in terms of an essential by product of design progress.

(RFS) Construct this

The constuctivists were a group of communist designers that:
DECLARED UNCOMPROMISING WAR ON ART

Led by Alexander Rodchenko and Varva Stepanova, the basis of the war was to eliminate experimental activity that was "removed from life" and instead "move toward real representation." They sought to use industrial mediums to create a system where the practicality of design helped forward communist ideas.

The elements of their ideology:

Tectonics- expedient use of industrial material in a communist way

Faktura - material that is consciously worked and expediently used without hampering the tectonics or the construction.

Construction - the organizational function of Constructivism

As far as I can tell from this piece, Construction means productive, so I would call this movement Productivism.

I would like to move deeper into their ideology to discern whether it has much to add to current discussion of social enterprise. There is a lot we can learn from the socialist nations that preceded our time.

(RFS) Irrational Absurd Contingent!

Theo van Doesburg 1922

Questions and quotes derived from "The Will to Style"

Does culture mean independence from nature?

Doesburg does a good job of being both especially broad, and minute in his scope. He also does a good job of making assumptions that base his new "style" in context. I suppose I disagree first with the nature vs culture approach (perhaps because I am taking a class called "natureculture"). Natural states of human independence derive from a natural order of freedom of movement and thought. Or perhaps the natural in this case describes the primitive, or the old way.

Is Materialism and hand craftsmanship the purest expression of the soul?

I'm unsure, hand craftsmanship is a wonderful expression of the soul, and often results in staggering beauty and resolution. But then again, I would define pure expression of the soul in terms of art making in general. The adage, "your art is" leads me to assume that art does not rely on traditional means to be called art. A class could be a work of art, (thanks DeCredico). I do not take for granted the words craftsmanship, pure or soul, so I'm gonna reserve judgment on this one.

Has craftsmanship as appropriate to individualistic points of view vanished due to mechanical progress?

No, this is where art fits in.

When man and labor are reduced to commodity in service of the cultural constructions do they achieve social liberation?

This is a loaded one. I wonder what Marx would say... I'm going to go with "no" for 500.... This requires its own rumination... Social Liberation

"To serve artistic ends the use of machines must be governed by the artistic consciousness"

De Stijl will make real all the things "which were known as magic, the spirt, love, etc...."

I agree with using design to make intangible experiences tangible, but I'm fairly sure that Doesburg is referring to these elements to describe how the style will unite these elements. the last sentence even goes so far as to declare that "This merging of art and life signifies nothing less than the spiritual reconstruction of europe."

Unified by visionary design eh?

Simplicity and repose? Truth and clarity in of form? Monumental synthesis?

I'm all for that.

(RFS) Bauhaus to Bauhaus

From Bauhaus to Bauhaus, everyone here is obsessed with the Bauhaus.

The Bauhaus was obsessed with architecture and designing everything for appropriate architecture. I think...

"The ultimate aim of all visual arts is the complete building!"

yea?

By uniting crafts under one roof, the bauhaus sought to enhance the ability of craftspeople to design in a unified way. (this sounds slightly like the standardisation vs high culture argument) They did this because:

Art cannot be taught, and therfore the educatino of artists should center around the workshop.
Art education begins with learning a "trade"
Proficiency of craft is essensial to any artist, and is the prime source of creative imagination.

The Bauhaus would:

Form a working community of leading and future artist-craftsmen (harmoniously)

encourage collaboration by the students in the work of the master,

secure commissions, also for students

foster constant contact with the laders of crafts and industries

design for contact with public life through exhibition and other activities

and encourage friendly relations between masters and students outside of work. (plays, lectures, poetry, music, costume parties etc..)

Students would learn through craft, drawing and painting, and science and theory. Craft training would occur through apprenticeships, drawing and painting through classes, and science and theory would approach art history to present working methods and techniques as opposed to styles, science of materials, anatomy, and personal finance.

Sounds fun!, I'd go.

(RFS) Decorating into Intimidation and The Age of Infertility

Herman Muthesius and Henry van de Velde had it out on day at the Deustcher Werkbund Conference in 1914. They fought over the role of their institution (to design for the built environment and promote their crafts etc..).

Muthesius wrote: (with numbers) 2. universal high taste has not been achieved / 3. "that the world will buy our products when they achieve convincing stylistic expression / 5. decoration into intimidation will signal a relapse wherein all hope for unified design is lost. / 7. This new standard of style should be brought to the world through publication and exposure.

van de Veldes response (with a similar numerical order):

1. The essence of an artist is that of a "burning idealist, a free spontaneous creator"=

3. The development of high culture does not happen over night, instead it is a recurring culmination of the preceding culture that occurs over generations and that to impose a standard on the world at this point (1914) would

5. Destroy the embryo in the egg.

van de Veldes argues that the creative approach (however it may come) is partially birthed by the "differentiated execution, and not through standardisation of creativity and that therefore imposing a standard "form" on the world runs contrary to the spirit of unified artistic expression. (which in my opinion falls along the lines of "free" artistic expression and not necessarily unified anyway.)

I disagree with van de Veldes second to last point (8.) where he summarizes the way arts help develop and influence the world and create a unified culture.

Quality will not be created out of the spirt for export. Quality is always firstly created exclusively for a quite limited circle of connoisseurs and those who commission the work. These gradually gain confidence in their artists; slowly there develops first a narrower then a national clientele, and only then do foreign countries.

I think it is obvious that the optimum approach is twofold. First that the freedom of expression should work its way through quality (either from the top down, or from the bottom up.) Secondly, that the scientific definition of standards should (like furniture) be continuously refreshed and made public so that the overall systems of creative expression can then continuously push the limits of possibility and thusly refresh necessary standards.

(RFS) Taylorism

Frederick Winslow Taylor invented the scientific management of production. He would do elaborate studies on efficiency wherein some people credit him with inventing the science of ergonomics. among other things that he champions (rewarding good workers, appropriate technology and what not) Taylor championed the pursuit of "the one right way to do things." He would define a specific process and then beat the hell out of it (scientifically) until he arrived at a system for the optimisation of that process.

Although principals such as these are taught everywhere in business and management school. "trim the inefficient" "find a better way to do things" I believe that this scientific approach or the ID equivalent (faux ethnographic study) frequently becomes overlooked and unexamined.

We must not succumb to modes of thought that reflect "I have the user in my head" types of mentality and we should continuously re evaluate the circumstances that we have designed for. It is impossible to design for the constraints of the world at once, the best we can do is furiously iterate solutions to maximise productivity, resourcefulness, the entire tripple bottom line, as well as more etherial or DADA ideas such as fun, or whimsical expression.

I believe these ideas also reference Christine Fredericks "Labor Saving Kitchen" of 1919 in which she defined a process:

In the goal of concentrating the working process to optimise productivity: Research, Distil, Rearrange

that sought to maximise "the homemakers investment of time, energy and money"

I wonder, do these ideals always need to be defined? Perhaps there is room for an exercise or a critique that finds the absolute wrong way to do things as a means of finding an alternate "right way" to do things.

(RFS) "Our Epochs Lack of Culture"

RFS stands for Ruminations for Storage.
In 1911 Hermann Muthesius wrote on the aims of the Werkbund, a group of artists and architects that sought to further high culture through their talents in design and manufacture. Muthesius asserted that the current epoch consisted of a profound "lack of culture" Muthesius cites the admirable progress that preceded him from the arts and crafts movement, but ultimately determines that humanity is still amazingly far from high cultural achievement. My definition of high culture probably differs from Muthesius, but nevertheless, Muthesius explains the Werkbunds task this way:

"... More importantly that the material aspect, is the spiritual; higher than purpose, material and technique stands form. Purpose, material and technique might be beyond criticism [he has a point here], yet without form we should still be living in a crude and brutal world."

It might be easy to explain the higher "form" that the Werkbund is fighting for to be some sort of spiritual ideal that brings together the previous facets and results in high cultural achievement. Maybe what he means by "without a total respect for form, culture is unthinkable." is that the built world (basically what the Werkbund was doing) must unite and illustrate the culture of the day through their use of material form, process, technique... and whatnot. Perhaps he is alluding to his future argument for the standardisation of form in pursuit of uniting the world. so to speak...