In the 90's we moved from a focus upon the funcional to where design matters.
Asethetics- here- is that which communicates through the senses, non-cognitive effect.
(See Ellen Dissanyake, Homo Aestheticus)
This is Style not Design, because that is not a discussion of function. Design inlcudes universals, and cultural notions of what gives pleasure.
The Substance of STyle:
"I like that."
"I'm like that."
Function and price have become givens. Aesthetics becomes the new axis of focus. It is the means to differentiate products, and this is also becoming a concern of regular consumers (read that as not necessarily those with good taste or artistic sensibilities).
"There's no such thing as an un-designed graphic object anymore, and there used to be." -Michael Beirut, graphic designer
Ford is to mass production : as MacDonalds is to convenience : as Starbucks is to style.
Everyone wants to be Starbucks. Textures, colors, lighting. Ditto in terms of the personal...personal attention, hair coloring, manicures, decoration of self - all on the rise.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY = AESTHETIC TECHNOLOGY
Good design is not about making the one perfect thing any more, but allowing people to make their own choices to make themselves happy.
*Note to self: buy the book. This is just the thing...tie Backs to notions of truth and beauty, aesthetics as being a means of guaging validity.
Posted by weez at October 18, 2003 10:42 AMOn the cognitive/aesthetic split: follow the preference and the form will function. Affect is not unconnected to intellect. ("I like, is me" gets modulated into "I belong, could, would, should belong" and then provokes the questions of affiliation and assembly)
I wonder if Postel, in The Substance of Style, takes on the space that is occupied by standards. Choice in surface style seems to operate with an undergrid of consumer product uniformity. Indeed, in the domain of information technology interoperability (a standards-based exercise) provides the basis for choice (software, hardware and their combinations).
On Dissanayke:
I read Dissanayake's book a while back (in the early 1999s). It's argument struck me as being very dichotomous in its formulation. A "style" that for me is not an indcator of good design.
Dissanayake, Ellen. Homo Aestheticus. Where Art Comes From and Why. New York: The Free Press, 1992.
Driven by a narrative of evolution as a story of seeking greater control over uncertainty, she neglects the aspects of creativity related to the generation of problems or the making of uncertainty. Her argument is almost ruined by this onesideness. Such a narrative also influences her take on orality/literacy questions.
"Writers cannot presume shared knowledge, so they must be explict where a speaker is implicit; precise and careful where a speaker can be careless; streamlined and sparse where a speaker can be redundant."
(205)
FranÁois Rabelais and Thomas Pynchon spring to mind as counter examples. There are also some odd genderings of the word/image dichotomy. She claims
"traditional women's arts tend to be diagrammatic and geometric, showing the networks of social relationships in which women participate, while men's arts are narrative and descriptive, showing their roles as warriors, hunters and adventurers."
(236, n. 21)
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance/1EX.HTM
If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is a man who has so much as to be out of danger?
Posted by: penis enlargement at November 26, 2004 09:20 AMMetaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.
Posted by: online poker at November 26, 2004 09:20 AM