- Title: [[The Aesthetics of Design]] - Author: Andy Hamilton - Tags: #summary #llmgenerated #toread #paper ## [[The Aesthetics of Design]] - An acrimonious dispute at London's Design Museum between designer James Dyson and director Alice Rawsthorn over the museum's exhibition policy and whether it was design - Dyson: focus on fashion "betraying its purpose", should encourage "serious design" of "manufactured objects" - Rawsthorn eventually resigned; Terence Conran announced construction of larger museum - Perennial problem of what design is: - Encompasses broad range including product design, graphics, engineering, fashion, home makeovers, cookery, flower arranging - "Design creep into everything" and "no such thing as undesigned graphic object anymore" ### Design as Problem-Solving or Design as Fashion? - Two trends: 1. "Designer" used as adjective in last 20-30 years 2. Design seen as profession much earlier - Author's view: - Design has two sides: solves functional problems and improves look/feel through style, decoration, embellishment - Design classics worthy of serious aesthetic attention - E.g. Henry Dreyfuss's black telephone handset, Dieter Rams's Braun clocks - Design overshadowed by notion of style/fashion in popular consciousness - "Designer" now more associated with fashion designers and their exclusive products - Design perceived as ephemeral like fashion, but early designs became classics - Some designs classics for aesthetic appeal (e.g. Umbra wastebasket), others despite functional deficiencies (e.g. VW Mini) - Continuum between complex problem-solving and styling - Most successful designs exhibit interpenetration of the two - "The best-[[designed objects]] don't just solve technical problems; they do it with style. Problem solving in design therefore has an ineliminable aesthetic component." - E.g. Citroën 2CV prioritized function over style - [[Possible objection]]: Isn't [[engineering design]] separate from style? - Author's response: If aesthetic element, it's design; if not, it's not - [[David Pye]]: invention discovers a principle, design applies it (essentially aesthetically) - E.g. Dyson cyclonic vacuum cleaners synthesize invention and stylish design - As consumer products, Dyson cleaners need style vs. Davy safety-lamp prioritizing practicality - But humans tend toward crafting beyond necessity (Pye's "useless work") ### The Rise of Design As a Profession: Is Design a Response to Consumerism? - Former president of Industrial Designers Society of America: "design creep into everything" because produced by professional designers with enhanced status - When did design become profession? - [[Harry Beck]] designed classic [[London Underground map]] as lower-status draughtsman - Grove Dictionary of Art: design originated c. 1800 with Industrial Revolution separating design from making, leading to profession of designer - Design continued to mean decoration and historical styles, but fundamentally about mass production of consumer goods - Author questions two claims/assumptions: 1. Design essentially involves consumer response - Author: What's essential is dual problem-solving and style/decoration, not consumer demand - "Designer" labels are fashion designers creating exclusive consumer products - But finest designs don't just decorate a technical solution 2. Discussion should begin c. 1800 - Peter Dormer: separation of craft and design a late 20th century phenomenon - But may mean radical divorce, not origin of designer/craftsman distinction - 19th century dating suggested by citation of 1836 debate on whether designer's art "prosaic" vs painter's "poetical" - Others argue professional design originated with 18th century consumer society - 1735 proposal for Irish design academy to perfect lace, carpets, tapestry manufacturing - 1749 essay on design claimed economic benefits, proposed public academy - Realized with 1852 founding of Victoria & Albert Museum to inspire design students and compete with France - Wedgwood pottery an early example of high-quality consumer goods influenced by China and Japan ### Consumerism, Self-expression, and The "Invention" of Design - 18th century England (1740-1760): concept of design in manufactured goods market and independent designers emerged (Saumarez Smith) - Linked to awareness of fashion and consumer goods expressing personality - Addison and Steele's Spectator offered bourgeois public advice on personal display through possessions including domestic interiors - Previously only elites used interiors to convey character and status meanings - More people wanted goods displaying individual taste; manufacturers responded - Design and the term emerged in 18th century but designing work preceded - Narrower sense: plans by class of professional designers for manufactured goods enabling consumerism - Broader sense: planning, by professional designers or not, consumerism inessential - Penny Sparke: > "within the context of changing production methods [[[the designer]]'s traditional] role became increasingly isolated from the "making" process, and … crucial as the source of "artistic input"… while [[the design]] process itself remained constant, its parameters, within manufacture, became clearer and, in social terms, its application more widespread." - Design in narrower, modern sense originates with design/making separation (like composition/performance) and rising practitioner status - But design in broader sense existed prior ### Consumerism Is [[Not Essential]] to Design - Consumer products important in modern design concept but designed product doesn't require commercial motives - Design often has commercial ends but they aren't essential to [[the concept]] - Self-conscious manufacturing design may postdate Industrial Revolution, but preferring objects for appearance predates it - What's new c. 1800 is idea that aesthetic preferences can express identity - "Consumer" also has broad and narrow sense - Broad: wherever there are markets - Narrow: self-expression through consumer choice (consumerism) - [[Oxford English Dictionary]] wrong to define design as improving commercial competitiveness through visual appearance - That's an application not a meaning, like "popular culture" for "culture" - Industrial design's "consumers" are industrialists motivated by profit not product appearance - To summarize: - Design has dual purpose of functional problem-solving and aesthetic styling - Response to consumers inessential - Modern sense allows consumerism but isn't defined by it - Modern sense defined by design/production separation and designer professionalization - So design remains specialized: preparations for buildings, artifacts, machines where visual/sonic appearance matters - Not applied to songs, knitting patterns, glues ### Were Neolithic Flint Tools Designed? - Possible argument: problem-solving and style involved in pre-industrial crafts but "designer" only vaguely refers to results being deliberate (like Paley's divine design not assuming God drew blueprints) - Author's view: - No reason Neolithic artisans couldn't represent projects in convenient media like sand or bark - So wrong to assert no pre-18th century design/production separation - But explicit plans/blueprints key to modern separable design sense - Documents are the designs - However modern design can also arise from "artistic inspiration" without blueprints - Broader design sense: appearance care through explicit plans or subconscious planning - Separable plans developed to realize original complex ideas (like music notation enabling originality) - Deeper issue: Grove's 18th century design origin claim may assume no genuinely aesthetic pre-18th century intentions - A misconception - [[aesthetic appreciation]] not limited to aesthetes/connoisseurs - Anyone can respond aesthetically to artifacts, rituals, gestures, etc. and have since human origins - "Aesthetic discrimination and pleasure is probably found in all occupations. The carpenter delights in a good piece of wood, [[the mechanic]] appreciates a well-polished cylinder and the farmer a fat pig." (Donald Brooks) - 19th century aestheticism inessential for aesthetic attitude - Ancient world treating artworks as functional doesn't mean no aesthetic appreciation - Ancient craftsman's funerary urn work assumed gods appreciated beautiful craftsmanship, an aesthetic attitude ### Can We Avoid Designing? – The Idea of "Useless Work" - David Pye's concept of crafting beyond necessity or "useless work" - "whenever humans design and make a useful thing they invariably expend a good deal of unnecessary and easily avoidable work on it which contributes nothing to its usefulness" - Function guides form minimally, imposing little creative restriction - Infinite hook or hat shapes available - Doing "useless work on useful things" a universal human behavior - Relatively easy to make ugly functional objects so "The essential bases of good design … are largely useless and, unfortunately, avoidable" - E.g. nails vs coat-hooks, 1950s electricity junction boxes - Is Pye's "useless work" really useless? - May contribute to item's social value and practical usefulness if enabling status gain - So better termed directly functionless work - not aiding defining function - Ceremonial sword jeweled handle may hinder defining injuring/killing function - Beautifully knapped but too large, probably ceremonial British Museum stone ax arguably designed but doesn't exemplify defining function well ### The Function and Value of Fashion - Fashion design mostly style not problem-solving, though specialized occupational clothing owes more to latter - New materials, shapes, sizes, assembly methods pose new design problems - Exclusive concern with style or problem-solving may indicate aesthetic impoverishment - As argued, directly functionless work has psychological/social functions of self-expression and adornment - Tribal fashion precursors essential to group identity - Neolithic agriculture and trade enabled modern ever-changing fashion seeking the new - Contact through trade/conquest allows imitating foreign cultures - "widespread predilection for importing fashions from outside" (Simmel) - Fashion design an art involving aesthetic skill/craft - Oscillates between self-expression and social expression - Georg Simmel analyzes this dichotomy in "The Philosophy of Fashion": - Fashion satisfies need for social adaptation and "satisfies the need for distinction, the tendency towards differentiation, change and individual contrast" - Holds social circles together while separating them, arbitrarily defining occasion-appropriate dress - Traditional clothing marks social status and tribal identity; modern fashion's social ranking often indeterminate but still "social discourse" - Under capitalism self-adornment commodified, fashion an industry paralleling commodified autonomous art - Artists embody own vs patron's values in market - But fashion can't be autonomous, always reflects body form and functional origin - Like sport/entertainment, fashion divided into classic/ephemeral, high/popular - Cross-fertilization as in music/literature (e.g. couture/haute couture) - "Classic" contrasts ephemeral, rewards serious attention; broader than hierarchical "high culture" - In fashion no traditions, just changing tastes seeming cyclical - Fashion taste largely non-autonomous - But creativity in wearer's self-expression, a reflective activity - True fashion doesn't follow the herd but anticipates it - Sartorial individualism perpetually anticipates or remains timelessly hip