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Discovering Design 12 (Re)Discovering Design Discussion about design is ubiquitous these days. Newspapers and magazines carry on about design as if it were a new concept, even though it is an all-encompassing part of daily life. All forms of design are getting attention: graphic design, advertising design, illustration, product design, interior design, fashion design, industrial design, web design, motion design, and urban design. University art departments are changing their names from departments of art to departments of art and design to designate the inclusive nature of art and design. Art and design professors around the country agree, “Artists and designers are all artists – period.” The wall of a cave, the side of a pot, the vaulted ceiling, the printed page, the digital screen. The media have changed; the purpose has not. Designers and illustrators have a pivotal role in a process of visual communication that provides a sense of who we are as a culture, how we are perceived, where we have come from, and where we’re heading. Brochure from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City Barbara Bloemink, art historian and curator of the 2004 Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum exhibition Design ≠ Art, reminds us that the relationship between fine art and design has been both harmo- nious and fractious. “Modern Western society has found it necessary to Ideas About Art, First Edition. Kathleen K. Desmond. © 2011 Kathleen K. Desmond. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. DDesmond_c12.inddesmond_c12.indd 117171 22/7/2011/7/2011 112:00:282:00:28 PPMM 172 (Re)Discovering Design distinguish between aesthetics and function, between the spiritual in art and the corporeal in design” (Bloemink and Cunningham 2004: 7). Disparaging comments like David Hockney’s “Art has to move you and design does not, unless it’s a good design for a bus” contribute to that frac- tious relationship between artists and designers. Philosopher Arnold Berleant thinks every design decision affects peo- ple’s daily experiences and that aesthetics is an essential part of those expe- riences rather than a “frill.” Current philosophical discussions focus on understanding the pervasiveness and importance of aesthetic factors in art and design. Artist/Designer Design overlaps with fine art when it is exhibited in the context of an art museum and engages viewers with questions that challenge ideas about art and design. British designer Michael Cross created a wooden floor in the shape of hills and valleys, designed a chair that changes its height in response to a visitor’s approach, and crafted tree branches into bookshelves. Resting Places Living Things, exhibited at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in 2008–9, challenged the parameters of the space, using the museum gallery as a design laboratory, an environment where experimental forms could be developed, nurtured, and studied for useful characteristics that could be transplanted into the larger world. Known for designs that change viewer’s preconceptions and deliberately confuse their expectations, Cross seeks new ways of considering space by eliminating the familiar and starting all over again. Cross was trained as a product designer, and all of his experimental designs can be industrially manufactured and utilized in everyday situations. Questions inherent in the exhibition Resting Places Living Things include concepts that industrial designers, interior designers, and architects work with, such as: Where do you expect to live; where do you expect to rest? Do memories rest in places, or do they live in things? Does life guide innovation or does innovation guide life? DDesmond_c12.inddesmond_c12.indd 117272 22/7/2011/7/2011 112:00:282:00:28 PPMM (Re)Discovering Design 173 Interior Designer/Graphic Designer Designers work with space. Some designers work with two-dimensional space and others with three-dimensional space. Specific designations are given to designers who focus on specific design problems in two- or three- dimensional space. Interior designers study art, design, history, and safety codes and issues, and focus on design in three-dimensional space. After a minimum of two years of experience, interior design students take rigorous exams to become certified professional interior designers. In the United States, the National Council for Interior Design Qualification organizes examinations that earn those who pass them the title of interior designer. According to the NCIDQ website (www.ncidq.org), “It is more important than ever for clients and the public to expect interior design professionals to demonstrate their competency in all areas of interior design.” This includes not only the beauty but also the safety of public and private spaces. The designation between interior designers and interior decorators has been compromised by popular “home decorating” programs on television that use the term “design” when they mean “decorate” and use the title “designer” regardless of credentials. Graphic designers study art and design, design history and theory, focus on two-dimensional space, and earn fine art degrees. Graphic designers work in advertising firms, graphic design studios, and busi- nesses that require effective visual communication, marketing, or brand- ing. Some graphic designers prefer to freelance and run their own businesses. Professionals who study the procedures of layout and print- ing but do not study art, art history, or art theory are called graphic art- ists. Sometimes graphic artists are erroneously called graphic designers, just as interior decorators are sometimes erroneously called interior designers. Designers as Cultural Agents One designer referred to design as a “cultural force” in the late 1980s, repeat- ing what progressive designers in the early twentieth century asserted about their role as communicators who influenced all facets of society. Designers developed mottos like “Good Design is Good Business” and influenced DDesmond_c12.inddesmond_c12.indd 117373 22/7/2011/7/2011 112:00:282:00:28 PPMM 174 (Re)Discovering Design culture in significant ways with the use of computers and the Internet, thus placing designers in the role of “cultural agent.” Graphic designers were in the forefront of new media that impacted con- sumer culture and new modes of communication. Some argued that graphic designers used this power as a tool for marketers and promoters to entice consumers into brand loyalties, resulting in wasteful indulgences, as Steven Heller did in Looking Closer 4 (Bierut et al. 2002). ARTnews wrote about design exhibitions like Cooper-Hewitt’s Inaugural National Design Triennial in an article titled “Sleeker, Thinner, Sexier” in 2000 (Cash 2000). Katherine McCoy considered what happens “When Designers Create Culture” in her article in PRINT magazine in 2002. McCoy explored how “communication design on a global basis often amounts to cultural imperialism, stifling local character.” Also explored in the first of several books in the series Looking Closer (Bierut et al. 1994) was the issue of meaning in design, starting with the familiar phrase “all form, no content.” Design history and theory are welcome contributions to the field because they help identify design as a discipline worth serious and thoughtful theoretical consideration along with practical and humanitarian practice. Interior Design Architectural principles and theories play a major role in many design prac- tices. Austrian architect Christopher Alexander is noted for his theories of design (and for more than 200 building projects around the world) and his influence on interior designers in particular. Alexander developed a series of “pattern languages” in 1977, described in his more theoretical Timeless Way of Building (Alexander 1979) and accompanying A Pattern Language (Alexander et al. 1977) books, to help designers understand cultural uses of space and how the environment can be designed to support human experience. Alexander spent most of his life developing these extensive language patterns based on scientific reasoning. His pattern language is a universal creative problem-solving framework. The elements of this language, each called a pattern, describe a problem that occurs over and over again in the environment. Pattern language describes the core of the solution to that problem in such a way that it can be used over and over without ever car- rying it out the same way twice. Based on human functions in the envi- ronment, pattern language can be seen from both a macro and micro DDesmond_c12.inddesmond_c12.indd 117474 22/7/2011/7/2011 112:00:282:00:28 PPMM (Re)Discovering Design 175 viewpoint; using the same set of laws to determine the structure of a city, a building, or a single room. Pattern language is completely different from previous architectural principles and planning approaches, which include grids, zones, roads, and buildings based on conceptual designs rather than on human activity. Alexander developed his pattern language for architects and designers and as a means of making environmental design accessible. He insisted that his philosophy and his architectural theories were inseparable, warning against a superficial application of his method and repeatedly stressing that achiev- ing coherence between built forms and human beings had to be accompa- nied by changes in basic attitudes. Form Follows Function Architects have influenced designers even before the Bauhaus in the early to mid-twentieth century and Christopher Alexander in the late twentieth century. In the 1800s, architects
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