Thursday, July 29, 2010
Beauty and Utility
"Construction should be decorated. Decoration should never be purposely constructed."
This Quote from Owen Jones from The Grammar of Ornament refers to the 19th century reformists attitudes of design ideas. These ideas are based on and around the concept of Beauty and Utility. Throughout historical and contemporary design we can visually see examples which support these beliefs and the various political, social and cultural motivation behind the ideas in design. It was put forth by people like Jones and Pugin that ornamentation and decoration should be tied to the function of the object, keeping in mind the true and false principals and nothing else. Jones applied this idea to botanical and nature like objects and placing them on wallpaper as patterns not as real life images put on a 2D surface. His ideas were very similar to A.W.N Pugin who was very dogmatic person in what he believe design should be in ornaments, the honesty of construction, don't decorate construction to make it look more important let it lie and make the elements respect what their natural properties are.
But during the 19th century Industrialisation became a major issue in everyday life, the rich had a hard time adjusting to the middle class moving into their lives, surrounding them in there everyday moves and actually starting to make some serious money to have a healthy and happy life. Industrialisation made the sense of place in people's lives different, with the use of machines people lots their jobs and kids started to get sent into the cities to work. As an example of the sense of place being lost when industrialisation came in is the workers who made nails, once upon a time they would of made every nail and new were it was going and what it was building. Every nail they made had a purpose (a sense of place in the world), but with industrialisation nails were just shipped off in bulk and used in many other towns and cities.
Owen Jones was closely associated with Henry Cole another very highly noted 19th century design reformist, together they put a strong emphasis on trying to educate the public in "good design". They believed there should be a "balanced relationship between beauty and utility" of the object and the decoration should be there to support it and not stand separately and over power the object itself. Together they also looked into historical styles and tried to develop a set of design principles for people to work with when designing or buying an object, they believed an objects purpose should be reflected in its decoration. Like putting flowers on a vase is acceptable, but putting buildings on a dinner plate is not.
At The Great Exhibition in 1851 the first large gathering of many different people showing and selling what they had and designed, it was like the first ever mall situation. The middle class consumer culture became obvious and it became apparent the public views of good taste differed to that of the reformists. People wanted things that were new and exciting to reflect the rapidly changing ways pf the times people were living in, they no longer wanted pieces pf design with practical meaning, they instead wanted objects with a sense of novelty. Even though the reformists had good intentions, there were those who thought they were taking away the "democratic freedom of choice" (Dickens). people wanted to be individuals and having a set of rules forced on them by figures of authority threatened this feeling of individuality.
I agree with Jones that the most important part of an object is the function. for an example of this, is the functionality of a apple computer; which is much more important that the decoration on the computer. Functionality and design is very important to the apple company, there light weight laptops are much more usable. than in the beginning when they were heavy and ugly pieces of hardware to buy. The slim size of the laptops make it easy to carry around and use in everyday situations. The object itself does not usually have decoration printed all over it to try make it confusing for the buyer, they are normally just plain and simply designed so everyone can use them.
This Quote from Owen Jones from The Grammar of Ornament refers to the 19th century reformists attitudes of design ideas. These ideas are based on and around the concept of Beauty and Utility. Throughout historical and contemporary design we can visually see examples which support these beliefs and the various political, social and cultural motivation behind the ideas in design. It was put forth by people like Jones and Pugin that ornamentation and decoration should be tied to the function of the object, keeping in mind the true and false principals and nothing else. Jones applied this idea to botanical and nature like objects and placing them on wallpaper as patterns not as real life images put on a 2D surface. His ideas were very similar to A.W.N Pugin who was very dogmatic person in what he believe design should be in ornaments, the honesty of construction, don't decorate construction to make it look more important let it lie and make the elements respect what their natural properties are.
But during the 19th century Industrialisation became a major issue in everyday life, the rich had a hard time adjusting to the middle class moving into their lives, surrounding them in there everyday moves and actually starting to make some serious money to have a healthy and happy life. Industrialisation made the sense of place in people's lives different, with the use of machines people lots their jobs and kids started to get sent into the cities to work. As an example of the sense of place being lost when industrialisation came in is the workers who made nails, once upon a time they would of made every nail and new were it was going and what it was building. Every nail they made had a purpose (a sense of place in the world), but with industrialisation nails were just shipped off in bulk and used in many other towns and cities.
Owen Jones was closely associated with Henry Cole another very highly noted 19th century design reformist, together they put a strong emphasis on trying to educate the public in "good design". They believed there should be a "balanced relationship between beauty and utility" of the object and the decoration should be there to support it and not stand separately and over power the object itself. Together they also looked into historical styles and tried to develop a set of design principles for people to work with when designing or buying an object, they believed an objects purpose should be reflected in its decoration. Like putting flowers on a vase is acceptable, but putting buildings on a dinner plate is not.
At The Great Exhibition in 1851 the first large gathering of many different people showing and selling what they had and designed, it was like the first ever mall situation. The middle class consumer culture became obvious and it became apparent the public views of good taste differed to that of the reformists. People wanted things that were new and exciting to reflect the rapidly changing ways pf the times people were living in, they no longer wanted pieces pf design with practical meaning, they instead wanted objects with a sense of novelty. Even though the reformists had good intentions, there were those who thought they were taking away the "democratic freedom of choice" (Dickens). people wanted to be individuals and having a set of rules forced on them by figures of authority threatened this feeling of individuality.
I agree with Jones that the most important part of an object is the function. for an example of this, is the functionality of a apple computer; which is much more important that the decoration on the computer. Functionality and design is very important to the apple company, there light weight laptops are much more usable. than in the beginning when they were heavy and ugly pieces of hardware to buy. The slim size of the laptops make it easy to carry around and use in everyday situations. The object itself does not usually have decoration printed all over it to try make it confusing for the buyer, they are normally just plain and simply designed so everyone can use them.
Friday, July 23, 2010
The 'Sensuous impulse' in design as a term, became popular in the Rococo period. It is a design idea that is pleasing to the eye with curves and flowing Rocaille shapes (which is a shell like design), instead of the straight line. Key aspects of these designs is the feminine side that is shown in the soft winding and twisting shapes, also with the shapes and sculptures that remind people of nature and freedom. This period also had designs that were classed to be very suductive and appealing to the viewer. Even though this design was very popular in the 18th century, a lot of contermporary designers still look back for inspiration and ideas for the future. The Pinchbeck box from a chatelaine is a classic example of a 'Sensuous Impulse' design from the Rococo era (1750). This design has the Louis XIV ear shell scrolls, but also has the asymmetrical use of motifs.Referencing - www.langantiques.com/university/index.php/file:100-1-359.jpg
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Blog Assignment 1
This is a Abisko Washbasin, that is designed to make people watch how much water they use. Watching it flow down the waterfall designed curbed shape and into the drain in the floor, therefore people know how much water they have used and in the future will relise how much they need to save. I think this design would be good in NZ, especially in making the country more of a green country in saving all the water we can.
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