Design and Culture

This rhetorical attribution to design, challenges interesting areas of debate regarding the negation between design and the world. Design is seen as ..

In this summative essay I would like to explore and analyse the influence that Graphic design has had on popular culture and consumerism. Graphic design can be defined as “the art and practice of planning and projecting ideas and experiences with visual and textual content. The form of the communication can be physical or virtual, and may include images, words, or graphic forms.” (aiga.org) Designers are problem solvers and it is their job to come up with a suitable solution to a problem. They have to find the best suitable means to communicate a particular message. Graphic Designers are at the forefront of advertising and the battle of selling giving the designer even greater responsibility, because of this graphic designers play a big role in consumerism. Consumerism, “as a social and economic order and ideology encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-greater amounts.” (wikipedia.org) Society have been gradually made to believe that they can increase their happiness through buying and spending. Consumerism is an international problem, but has existed for many years, people purchasing goods that exceeded those of their basic needs dates way back to the first civilisations, in the eras of ancient Egypt and Rome. A turn in consumerism arrived just before the industrial revolution, people worked long hours and earned low wages, so they didn 't have the time or the disposable income for excess spending. The industrial revolution welcomed the use of assembly

Alice Rawsthorn starts her Ted lecture with a statement that design has different meaning at different times. However, the all Inspiring designs have something common: they were created by dreamers: people who have big dreams and rebels the conventions. As a proof to her statement, Rawsthorn brings examples from the human history. The first example is about Ying Zheng who designed the all fighting tools in identical way. This case emphasizes the importance of design tools as a response to unique needs as war: defense/attack. Moreover, he gave solution of necessity of maintain product consistency in order to keep the maintenance and

In today’s art world there seems to be a large gap that separates fine art from commercial art. Often there is a disconnected coldness associated with those who work in communications art and produce art for clients. As if all emotion and feeling is stripped from commercial artwork merely because it was created with the intention of pleasing a client. Stefan Sagmeister bridges the gap in the art industry by redefining commercial design as a personal, emotional, and deep art. While Sagmeister’s work encompasses a vast spectrum of mediums such as, album covers, logos, installations, and posters it is his philosophy on design that

The fact that technology is evolving every second means that the way we design, create and even advertise it is changed. Designer can go a long way, in many different directions. Even though the innovations introduced have a major positive impact, they do have a negative one as well.

we as human especially designers and artists use drawing and sketching to help us to generate ideas

The phrase "what is design" has been contemplated constantly. Walking down the street, people see cars, buildings and advertisements; piece of artwork serving purposes in the daily lives. Throughout society, people are bombarded by a verity of designs captivating the users and manifesting itself within cultural space. It is a broad definition and this may be due to the existence of art, with the two forms sharing such similarities yet different quite distinctly. Designers create to capture users attention, but ‘what is design?’ When the term ‘design’ comes to mind, it could be difficult to define and is often misconstrue as a term for art, however they have two entirely different meanings.

In this text, three essays extracted from the compilation “Design and Art” by Alex Coles, are being analyzed or commented. This three essays seek to explain a clear definition of the word design and then proceed to relate/separate design, giving details about the function and goals of design and determining the motto and characteristics of art.

Created in 1964, the original ‘First Things First’ Manifesto called for “more lasting forms of communication” to become the focus in design over commercial advertising for products that the author’s deemed unworthy, such as “striped toothpaste” and “stomach powder” . Thirty six years later another group of designers re-released their own version of the manifesto under the same name, again calling for a new kind of meaning and purpose for design . They stated that “consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part through the visual languages and resources of design” . According to the manifesto, the world saw designers purely as advertisers, and called for more worthy focuses of design to be encouraged, similarly to in the original manifesto. In this essay, how consumerism was running uncontested will be examined, particularly in terms of advertising and the commercialisation of culture when the two different manifestos were written (1964 and 2000). Also, the essay will highlight how this is being opposed through anti-consumerist works, including works made by those who created both the original and

Design is that area of human experience, where skill and knowledge is concerned with man’s ability to mould the environment according to his material and spiritual needs. It is used to analyse and identify problems to find an appropriate solution. Designers have created all kind of functional designs to help improve people’s lives. They were interested in the nature of beauty, art, and taste and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. Although there are examples of pre-historic art, they are rare and the guidelines that they followed are not so clear, Thus the aesthetic doctrines that guided their production and interpretation one mostly unknown. However, recently designer notice what happing to the world such as global worming

Product design: Products are made from famous designers who are known in the art domain, it

Me being a product designer was always fascinated with Bauhaus and their design theory. I like simple yet functional products as simplicity is very hard to achieve. The honest use of materials is very important for me and Bauhaus is all about that. Mass production caters to a variety of people and through better and manufacturing techniques we can improve the standard of living of every individual and move the human race forward. Designing for a mass is a very difficult task as we need to think about all likes and dislikes of the consumer and then design accordingly.

We are all part of an interlinking system, a system that needs balance with humanity and nature at the forefront. As Designers it is important that we take self interest out of design and instead collaborate within our physical environment and make sure that from the get go, our designs should work around a collaborative system that has a wide breadth of professional fields and influence from existing infrastructures found within our world. Victor Papernak writes “eighty percent of the environmental impact of the products,services, infastructures around us is determined at the design stage.” I have chosen to explore collaborations within the natural world, our industrial ecology and social design as examples of how important working together with other professionals and the environment we live in are for the bigger picture. In Victor Papernak’s book Design for the real world, Papernak uses an anecdote to stress the importance of collaboration for successful design.

The paper aims at sensitizing designers towards the voices of every stakeholder involved in designing a product that influences through the product life cycle, in a comprehensible way with an objective to facilitate designer towards a better design. This paper discusses the basic purpose and nature of design in the context of judging the aptness of a dialogue among the stakeholders including product in itself. It also discusses the kind of outcome based on designers stand in the design process which makes the conversation dialogical or arguing in nature. The paper proposes ‘Design Tree’ as a structure, for creating distinct platforms for dialogue to happen at all stages of design evolution for design dialogue to be comprehensible.

A great design is not only one that is functional, the beauty and feeling of a design is a key for us to feel good about a product. A great product with no feeling will fail. A beautiful design helps to create a relation between us and a product. A car with the same specification as a Volkswagen Beatle will never make the same connection to a Beatle lover. People simply buy an iPhone not just A PHONE with similar functional specification, the feeling matters.