设计文章 Design and Culture

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Design and Culture

Abstract:

    1.uses "Design" in a different way; but one must add that a universal language is being constructed daily

    2. design is understood here as a phenomenon which affects everybody.

    3. design is characterized by a dual alliance with both mass production and mass consumption and that these two phenomena have determined nearly all its manifestations

    4．Industry unconsciously evolved its own aesthetic, and this aesthetic was from the beginning one which intelligent designers, whatever their background, tried to obey

Key Words: Culture，aesthetic，imperfect，confidence

   

        Now that "Design" is understood from Tokyo to Moscow, from Buenos Aires to Montreal, it is obvious that each country according to its politics, its economics, its sociology, its industry, uses "Design" in a different way; but one must add that a universal language is being constructed daily.

        The word "culture" is used throughout the text in its most democratic sense, that is, as a concept which embraces the ideas and values expressed by modem society as a whole, rather than one which only touches one level of human endeavor. In parallel, design is understood here as a phenomenon which affects everybody.

        This definition of culture has to be considered within a broad context which subsumes economies, polities and technology as these are the forces which have determined the dominant cultural patterns in modem society. Design is also formed and sustained by these forces and, as a result, designed artifacts act as cultural ciphers. In this book, I have set out to examine both the way in which culture has influenced design in this century and the manner in which design has, in its turn, played a part in creating culture through the objects, institutions, personalities and the patterns of behavior and thought that have accompanied it. Since 1900, design and culture, in this wide sense, have become increasingly interdependent and the implications of this relationship will re-emerge constantly in the following chapters.

        My main thesis is that, within the framework of industrial capitalism which created it and continues to dominate it in contemporary Western society, design is characterized by a dual alliance with both mass production and mass consumption and that these two phenomena have determined nearly all its manifestations. Like Janus, design looks in tow directions at the same time: as a silent quality of all mass-produced goods it plays a generally unacknowledged but vital role in all our lives; as a named concept within the mass media, it is, however, much more visible and generally recognized. In this latter guise design becomes an extension of marketing and advertising. The "designer-jeans" phenomenon, which persuades us to buy a product because it has been designed, is, culturally speaking, totally distinct from the activity of the anonymous designers within industry who resolve the problems of cost, appearance and use in consumer products. The way in which design as an adjunct of marketing has grown out of design as an aspect of mass production is a major theme within the story of modem design and the focus of this book. It is a change which directly mirrors the way in which the model of mass-production industry, as presented by Henry Ford, which dominated American ideas about industrial organization in the early twentieth century, has been challenged by an alternative model which stresses batch production, a smaller scale of operations (or set of operations), and, at times, a fair amount of hand or skilled work. This latter model - best expressed by Sloane's work at General Motors in the USA in the 1920s and by contemporary development in Japan and Italy - puts the demands of the marketplace above those of the logic of mechanized mass production and tends, as a result, to value the diversification of products rather than, or as well as, standardization. These two models of industry coexist in this century and have different implications for the meaning of design. An important sub-theme is the way in which the aesthetic of designed artefacts has swung repeatedly backwards and forwards from production to consumption as sources of metaphorical inspiration.

        While this book concentrates on design as it has come to be defined and understood since the advent of mechanization, and emphasizes those themes which have made it part of recent history, it is also important to remember that the concept has an earlier history which is largely responsible for the way we comprehend it today. Design has always been one aspect of a larger process - whether of manufacturing, in the craft or mechanized sense, or, from the consumer's point of view, of participating in social or economic life - and its definition has, from the moment the word entered the English language, been in a state of constant flux due, primarily, to the changes in the social-economic framework which has sustained it. Thus the difference between a seventeenth-century-pattern maker and a modem industrial designer is less one of the nature of their respective creative activities than of the economic, technological and social constraints within which the activity is performed. What have remained constant are the visualizing and humanizing aspects of the design process as even today the designer's input into the manufacture of an electronic calculator, for example, focuses on the aesthetic and ergonomic aspects of that product.


        Long before the profession of industrial designer was invented, there were people who carried out the designer’s function. Basically, they can be divided into two groups —— the artisans and the architects. Artisan design evolved from direct work with tools and materials, and even , in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, from direct work with machines and an intelligent exploration of their possibilities. Industry unconsciously evolved its own aesthetic, and this aesthetic was from the beginning one which intelligent designers, whatever their background, tried to obey. Philips Webb, the architect who built the seminal Red House for William Marries, and who later made designs for that fountainhead of the English Arts and Crafts Movement, the firm of Morris & Co., once said:” I never begin to be satisfied until my work looks commonplace.” The table-glass which he designed for manufacture by James Powell & Sons at White friars proves that he meant what he said. The idea was thus planted very early that the successful industrially produced object eschewed not only ornament but anything which might make it seem conspicuous.

        Industry, however, did not simply establish itself and then become a constant, a stable background against which the designer must work. It constantly threw up new problem. What happens, for example, when a machine is used to produce, not just some simple object, but another machine? Here, new born, is a mechanism which may seem to dictate a surface which is visually complex, to reflect the complexity of a multitude of parts. Is the designer obliged to follow faithfully whatever lies beneath the casing? If he does, this may result in a form which is economic from the material point of view, but uneconomic visually because it requires a much greater effort of perception.

        Loewy was not himself a trained engineer, but someone who took over after the engineers had done their best or worst. This is a very common situation where industrial designers are concerned, and it calls into question the assertion made by one authority on the subject——that good design is “the outward expression of the engineer’s confidence in his work.” In fact, whether it is the creation of trained engineers or not, industrial design is quite often palliative, not radical. It is a technique that may be used to conceal faults, such as distortions in die-castings, introduced by the inaccuracy of machines, rather than to show off their accuracy. In these circumstances the industrial designer’s job is to see that these inevitable faults do not spoil the finished result —— for example by introducing a moulding to disguise an imperfect fit.

        In any case, the designer’s task is often to establish limits rather than to conduct a search for perfection. He tries to trace the frontiers within which a range of acceptable solutions can be found. These boundaries are usually drawn for him by questions of cost as well as by those of structural strength and mechanical efficiency.

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