Context Of Practice : Design As Art

Key Notes & Quotes:

Seurat - 'The literary element in a visual work of art was the first to be discarded in favour of pure visuality' - p.11
Arisits abandoning safe traditional techniques - 'to create an art for everyone' - p.12
'There should be no such thing as art divorced from life, with beautiful things to look at and hideous things to use.' - p.25
Walker Gropius - Bauhaus prospectus: 'our task is to make a new kind of artist, a creator capable of understanding every kind of need... because he knows how to approach human needs.' - p.27
'The first school of design did tend to make a new kind of artist, an artist useful to society' - p.27
'When the objects we use everyday and the surroundings we live in have become in themselves a work of art, then we shall be able to say that we have achieved a balanced life.' - p.27

What is a Designer?

Bruno - believes that the beauty of an object lies in the functionality and ability to do exactly what it was made to do and do it well. - p.30-31
Artist used to be called upon to make works of communication- now call upon designer. - p.31

Why Designer and not Artist?

Designer knows about printing, techniques used etc.
Use forms and colours according to their psychological functions.
'The designer is therefore the artist of today... works in such a way as to re-establish contact between art and the public.' - p.32
Jean- Baptiste Lamarck - 'The form follows the function.' p.33
Visual design - 'images whose function is to communicate and inform visually: signs, symbols, the meaning of forms and colours and the relations between these.' - p.33

A Living Language

'It is a well known fact that to get a message across we can not only use words but in many cases also images, forms and colours, symbols, signs and signals.' - p.37

A Rose is a Rose

The growing use of symbols on a worldwide scale demands absolute clarity of expression.'
'If a visual message is going to get across to people of different languages and backgrounds it is essential that the message does not lend itself to wrong interpretations.' - p.41
'We all have inside us (naturally with some variation from person to person) groups of images, forms and colours which have exact meanings.' - p.43

The Stylists

Example - Re-designing a car that is no longer selling- keep inside the same (function), change outside to appeal to people of the time (aesthetics). - p.47

Variations on the Theme of the Human Face

'Different techniques provide variations on the face- features stay the same but are structured differently' -p.55 - practical work idea?

Two in One

Can see things within other things i.e. pictures in clouds - p.72
'This business of two or more images in one must be taken into account by the graphic designer when he is trying to achieve really concentration visual communication.' - p.72
Has a lasting effect - seems to the viewer to be a private acquisition - a personal discovery beyond what was obvious to obvious. - p.72

A Language of Signs & Symbols

In these ancient scripts signs have one value on their own and another when used in combination - when used together, create narrative - p.78

Hobo-signs as practical example?
Variations of trademark of the Club degli Editori emblem of a fish - sketches were made to see how far it could be changed and still remain recognisable - p.98

A Spontaneous Form

'There are limits on how far simplicity of structure can be taken and it is exciting to push things to these limits' - 116
Examples of simplification - The arrow:

Realised that all one's attention should be concerned with the point of the arrow - the part that actually conveys the message. The rest could be eliminated. - p.201

Sunday 22 October 2017