Design As a Conversation

Image from swsaonline.com 

In our everyday world we can see design almost everywhere, but usually the most powerful ones are those that do not rely on excessive amount of words to convey a message, but ones that are straight to the point and at many times are iconic. Take one of the most famous architects Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe could not have said it any simpler than saying these three words that "less is more."

In order to understand how design is used as a conversation we need to first understand what conversation means. In context a conversation is usually a message or ideas from one source which communicates towards multiple individuals through the act of speech. Typically good conversations are getting your ideas from point (a) to point (b) without having any confusion in between which at many times acquits to the awkward silence and that "what are you talking about look" on a person's face. 

In terms of design, the designer puts out a concept or message to communicate to the audience what he/she is trying to portray. Take for instance a commonly seen object such as the restroom sign. The intent of the object is to direct the audience to the correct restroom area by using a sign with a figure of a man within a triangle which is meant for men and a figure of a person with a dress enclosed in a circle to represent female.

Yet, not all conversations end up with one simple solution or answer that a person obtains from a piece. Sometimes in order to create a deeper conversation there are no right and wrong answers, but instead open interpretation. Take Marina Abramovic 1974 work entitled Rhythm 0, in which Abramovic placed 72 items that the audience could use and perform any acts at their wish with theobjects while standing still. Some of these items ranged from objects which cause pleasure, while others were used to inflict pain such as a gun. For example at one point in the performance a person took the gun and placed it at her head. The act of putting her at gun point was one of the many responses as well as the act of another person taking the gun and throwing out the window. The point of this performance was a conversation between theartist and audience in showing what humans would and would not do given the situation. 

image from premierartscene.com

Compare and Contrast

Image from my.opera.com

Image from my.opera.com

Sight is probably the most important function in terms of our five senses we as humans are gifted with, especially towards designers. It is from sight that we can take a whole image and it down to its basic conceptual elements which an image presents such was shape, line weights, color, size and even texture. This then translates n our minds the cognitive distinctions and similarities an object or piece has.  Two pieces of art work I would like to compare and contrast are those from two famous pieces belonging to Edvard Munch “The Scream” and Vincent van Gough’s “Starry Night”.

The comparison

Each image although different, have many similarities which are interesting to point out. For starters, each have a fluid brush stroke style which gives that distorted look to it and motion seems to be prevalent in each piece. Also when analyzing the two, it seems that the main focus seems to be the environment/background instead of the foreground. Although it is easier to read from “Starry Night” due to its title and the focal point being the wind, Munch’s piece seems to be a lot harder at first because people tend to focus on the person first, when in reality the lines/ focal point points out to the background. I remember  in a past Art history class I took at a community college one of the lecturers talked about Munch’s piece stating that it really the person screaming or is it really the natural environment (the sky) screaming at the person; hence the individual covering their ears.

The Contrast

Differences are distinguish in paintings and are easily more identifiable than that of the similarities. Other than one having no entourage in them and the use of cool and warm coolers being more prevalent in comparison, when looking closely at the style there is indeed a big difference. For instance, the brush strokes are more smear like in Munch’s piece where as Van Gogh has more of a pattern to his texture, using a repetitive type motion.

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Designer Main Stream

 image taken from guyhepner.com

During last week lecture and quiz, one of the artist/designers that stood out to me the most was Takashi Murakami.  Due to his cartoonish style that he uses which are similar to that of Japanese anime but also using a vast array of flashy, bright colors and use of repetition. Looking at his piece “Killer Pink” which portrays the use of smiling flowers varying and colors/size, the image bothered me for a while because I knew I saw this type of design style in somewhere in our everyday life and that it became iconic in my mind. It wasn’t until I got home to my apartment that I went to my CD collection and picked out my Kanye West Graduation album that the album art cover and the” Killer Pink” style were similar. After researching I was indeed correct in my theory that Murakami did in fact design the album cover.

In looking and reading some of his works I have to say I am pretty impressed at what he has done so far in his career. Just like the story of “Stone Soup” as to the basis of how designers normally work together to create something great, Murakami can be seen in relation to this because of how he worked with such designers to transformer their designs a step further. take for instance Kaye West's iconic bear symbol which are incorporated in some of his music video, Murakami used his design approach in creating the bear which you see in the album "graduation". In addition, he has done many collaborations with popular clothing brands such as Marc Jacob and Louis Vuitton. Below are some of his famous works in which has influenced main stream pop cutlure.

Image taken from deviantart.com

LDA 21 Poster Design

Last Week or so, in my landscape architecture graphics class, our instructor Steve Mcniel gave the class a project in which we were to create some sort of landscape architecture firm and make a sort of logo/billboard that represented the company and what it stood for. The intent of my make believe firm named “Connect Designs” was a company that focused on lessening the ecological footprint on the environment. Thus, Connect Design idea  was to establish the forward-thinking concept of sustainability in our landscape planning and business.

Remember the saying a picture can tell one thousand words? Well I wanted something that did just that, while creating something simple, yet clean. There were several conceptual concepts that I had to go through, but I finally decided on that was closest to my expectations. Of course just like many designers/artist, I found inspiration of this logo from without from three iconic of the new Golden State Warriors logo, clothing brand LRG and the Ying and Yang symbol. The idea of my logo was having nature/environment on one side, and the urban city environment (where people live) on the other creating that Ying and Yang type feel to it since people sometimes associate urban development as being opposites to the environment. Which then brings me to the color scheme of violet and yellow which in basic color theory is you guessed it opposites, although opposites these two colors work very well together in my opinion. In the middle of the logo is an image of a parent and a child holding hands which is symbolic because what the firm is trying to do is to bring two both worlds into one . Finally, the whole arrow loop thing has two meanings, which is one to symbolize the first letter of the firm Connect and secondly to resemble a closed loop and containing.

The whole image was then done on a 18x 24 inch poster board to be presented in our class. I’m not sure if this works well, so any critique both negative and positive are more than welcome.

Design From Without

Images of the Walt Disney Opera House taken from about.com

 Artist, designers, and even architects have a keen sense of making an image in their head and creating it into something exceptional. Yet, almost all of these people do not think of an idea from out of nowhere, many get such ideas from inspiration not from within, but rather from without. Inspiration can be from anywhere whether it is from your favorite song or band, the food you are eating, or even an everyday smoke-pipe, people build upon something which already exists.

One person who I want to focus on that finds inspiration from the outside world is a famous architect by the name of Frank Gehry. Frank’s work has appeared in many places in the world such as Anaheim, Korea, and even in the two dimensional animation world of The Simpsons .Gehry, is most recognized by the deconstructive style in his architecture (Deconstructive meaning breaking an object, or shape and distorting its original feature).  

In an interview conducted by www.achievement.org, Gehry finds his inspiration in the” interest of the sense of movement in architecture… [And looking] at what's around you, you take things in, you absorb. I think the most important thing is the people; finally, it's a human thing. It's how you interact with people and how you interpret their wishes and yearnings”.  Here Gehry architect combines both his own interest in the subject of movement and combining it with the ideas from a client. In a sense his inspiration resembles the logic/idea from that of Stone Soup, in the inspiration of team work.

Stone Soup

The Story of Stone Soup is a tale of three soldiers coming home from war and stop by a village to see if they have anything to spare for them.  The village angered by other travelers looting/taking their stuff, become possessive of their belongings unwilling to share. The soldiers fill a pot with stone and water over a fire. Curious villagers come by and ask what they are doing. The soldiers tell them they are making stone soup which is a really mouth watering meal, except they would need only a small amount of ingredients   to make the soup complete. As more and more villagers look at this marvel, they too bring more to the pot, finally making a huge feast shared by the whole town.

The point of Stone Soup through a design perspective,  is that designers typically work together in order to create something extraordinary. Last Tuesday, the Design 1 class in Davis formed into groups, mixing all design/non-designs together to work together and create something out of nothing with items that a person brought from their home.  This project was not designed to have a plan process, where people would draw a concept before making, it basically creating something by just doing and adding one thing after another. As each person started creating random pieces slowly piecing things together, the randomness of the objects slowly became unified, creating some sort of form. 

Here our team headed by the mentor Noelle, started to create what looks like a figure resembling a human. The head pictured in white is made from a white lantern, the body made from fans, twigs for the arms, and other commonly found objects were put together  to make a sculpture, while using the natural surroundings of Davis such as the tree to be able to hang the object with a string. When looking at the enitre form and trying to understand the piece is basically up in the air and is subjective.

Is Less Really More?

 Images from yelp.com

One of the greatest architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is most notably known to adopt the phrase “less is more” which by simplifying objects, the more a person can get out of it. This saying can be connected to one of my trips this past weekend.

While walking through San Mateo which is located in the peninsula of the San Francisco Bay this past weekend, my girlfriend (Mary) and I were out on a journey to find something to eat after watching a movie. Both of us had no idea what we were craving so we were open to any ideas on what to eat. There were clusters of signs advertising for their respective businesses whether it was a pho restaurant, or Italian restaurant, each had their own way of getting a person’s attention to eat there. Yet, one place stood out from the rest. Although, small compared to a lot of the restaurants around the area, the way the façade was designed was very simple, yet attractive. There were no large signs advertising to eat there just simple text entitled “The Shabu Way” using two colors of black and red to distinguish itself. Design wise using red is a great way to grab attention instantly because the color red is warm which tends to jump at you, while cool colors such as blue normally recede. Also a connection can be made with the Japanese food Shabu Shabu, which is thinly sliced kobe beef, cooked in a type of broth. Kobe Beef which is normally pinkish-red in color can be associated with the theme color of the restaurant giving that idea that they serve kobe beef. From all these simple small design aspect, to me gave me a lot of information of the place.

Image from yelp.com


So is less really more? I would strongly think so. Look at the most successful companies and how they advertise themselves such as Apple, Nike, etc. They use simple designs to get through the viewer eliminating the confusion about where to look or misinterpret the priority of each element.

Memories of Design

 From Babble.com

Objects affect the lives of people every day whether it’s for the purposes of listening to a person’s favorite band from an IPod or a rush of excitement from a Porsche 911, these objects become part of who we are. Looking into my past one of the many objects that may have given me my first positive memory on the basis of design would have to be Legos. Now Legos are seen as very primitive in design when looking at it alone, but when worked together it then becomes something to marvel at for minutes and at times days. It has a vast array of color and is smooth to the touch on the sides of the piece but rough on the top and the bottom. This object appealed to me as a little kid because of the many designs one can come up with using very basic shapes of a multi-color square/rectangle block and create something complex and fun.  There was no one set of design like some toys or objects out there where it was fixed into place. With Legosmy imagination became limitless. One day I would be designing a house where I would pretend I was living in and other times would create a new setting or thing a coming from these blocks.

As I look back and compare that to the type of major I want to come out of Davis with, which is Interior Architecture/ Landscape Architecture, part of the reason as to why I may have chosen to be in this field was because of Legos. It helped my creativity directed me to somewhat have a huge interest in design.

Something New for GSW

A huge change has occurred with the Golden State Warriors an NBA team located in Oakland California. Although this team is known have one of the best basketball fan base in America, it has seen little progression in the last decade up until now. The team has a reshaped their roaster, new coaching staff, and even a bigger change in their image. The Warriors are going back to a more traditional look which is reminiscent of "The City" logo used in the 1960's. Their new design replacing the unfavored "W" with a thunder bolt running across the middle, with a little bit of Bay Area flavor show casing the new eastern span of the upcoming Bay Bridge. The logo displays a silhouette of the bridge captured inside a circle. The color has also changed from navy blue/orange with that of royal blue/gold which were the Warriors original colors up until 1997. 

Images taken from nba.com

 The Transformation from the comic book logo to something more modern and clean looking is a big upgrade design wise. A sense of Gestalt can be seen as well with the new logo using blue.yellow without the use of line weights. It is through our cognetive mind people can look past these these blobs of color and obtain the iconic image. Also another thing to note is the use of text which is part of the design itself. By using text, it gives the audience an idea of what team this is than simply putting a W letter. Yet, has some minor things which make the logo look generic. For starters, the font displaying the “Golden State Warriors” seems as if the designer was too lazy to be  with the lettering and just opened up his Mac laptop choosing the first fonts listed on a Photoshop program. In all, I do believe that the new look is a huge improvement compared to some of the Warriors past. There will always be some disagreements about the design, but in all a good job.