Everything I learned in Design 1 summed up by one post:

Design is Dangerous

Designers don't always design for good. Cigarettes and their often deceitful advertisements are harmful to humans and to society. Many people become smokers because of ad campaigns by tobacco companies, which are created by designers.

Cigarettes are known to cause lung cancer, asthma, heart attacks, stroke, and many more complications that I won't elaborate on as this is a design blog, not a medical blog. My design 1 class got to experience the damage a loved one's smoking can cause when guest lecturer, Brian Fies, shared excerpts of his graphic novel, Mom's Cancer, with us. Fies's family had to watch their mother suffer and the stress and confusion took a toll on the rest of the family as well. The effects of cigarettes are dangerous and often deadly and for a designer to promote tobacco use is dangerous.

Tobacco companies have a great deal of money and power and are therefore able to pay designers well for their ad campaigns. However, is it ethical for a designer to promote something known to cause harm to humans and society? Designing promotional materials for cigarette companies is dangerous because the advertisements often target you people by appearing cool, artsy, or counter-culture. Tobacco companies have found that if they get consumers hooked on their product at a young age—often before the legal smoking age—they will be customers for life. By designing an advertisement with cartoons, which appeal to children, promoting cigarettes, the designer begins the cycle of attracting a child to cigarettes, who later becomes a smoker for life and dies prematurely of heart complications or lung cancer. Design can be very very dangerous.

In today's society, designers know the consequences of smoking and more importantly encouraging society to damage their bodies through smoking. Whether or not they choose to create dangerous design that promotes cigarettes is a question of ethics. A designer must decide if they are willing to knowingly promote a harmful substance just to get paid. The consequences of designing for tobacco companies is intentional.

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Utopian Design

Street signs are an example of a utopian design because their aim is to improve society by preventing people from getting lost and aiding in travel.The word Utopia literally means "no place," because no place on Earth can be truly perfect. However, the goal of Utopian design is to bring life on Earth as close to the unattainable ideal as possible. Designers seek to create Utopia by designing to improve society.

image via businesspartnernyc.com

Street signs benefit society by giving people a sense of direction and location. Street signs assign a name and exact coordinates to a point in space. By naming roads, one knows where they are, where they are traveling and can more easily find how to get to their destination. The best street signs are clean and easily readable. A successful sign is simple, not over-embellished, and relays its message as efficiently as possible. Making an area easier to navigate encourages travelers, which bring business and new ideas.

Since Utopia is in ideal concept, no design can truly be Utopian; however, that does not mean that designers don't continually try to achieve Utopia. Even the best designs have their shortcomings. Not all road sign are especially readable or instantly apparent to the viewer. For example, in many European countries, the street names are posted on the sides of buildings, which American travelers are unfamiliar with and often find confusing. This lack of universality causes confusion and is ultimately a downfall of this design. Also, although street signs tell you where you are, they don't always tell you how to get where you want to go and even in a well-singed city, one could end up lost.

Overall, street signs are successful at improving society and are therefore a Utopian design. Without them, navigation would be difficult, which would make travel frustrating.

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how color transforms a single design

As I have been learning from Design 1 lectures and from reading Interaction of Color by Josef Albers, color can have dramatic effects on a design. The addition of color to a black and white design can be transformative. Each color carries its own distinct personality which it reflects upon the design. When presented in different colors, the same design can look dramatically different.

American painter, Wayne Theibaud, is fascinated by artificial colors and the prevalence of these colors in our society. His works carefully study the colors of mass produced objects such as cakes, candy, ice cream, and make up.

Confections by Wayne Theibaud

Theibaud's paintings are never monochromatic, but are the synthesis of several bright, eye catching colors. However, while any of these colors alone in a composition would draw the viewers attention immediately, these colors combined balance each other out and create a unified whole. The colors in Thiebaud's paintings interact rather than compete.

Albers discusses how some colors are more dominant than others. Thiebaud uses this dominance effect to his advantage when intending a bright color or colors to stand out from a subdued background.

Boston Cremes by Wayne Thiebaud

Thiebaud's painting are often characterized by dramatic shadows. To convey these shadows, Thiebaud mixes the bright colors used in the lit surface with darker colors like black to create varying shades of the colors, which illustrate varying degrees of shadow.

If one were to subtract color from Theibaud's paintings, while they would still by lovely, they would not be nearly as captivating. Color transforms his designs and urges the viewer to look at the brilliant artificially-produced colors that exist in everyday objects.

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Ergonomics

At the surface level, industrial design appears to be mostly consumed with aesthetics. Admittedly, some designs are; McCloud compares these designs with all aesthetics and no substance to a hollow apple. However, the major concern of industrial designers is ergonomics, or how to make a product work better for the consumer on a variety of levels.

I have chosen to analyze a riding helmet from a point of ergonomic criticism. My riding helmet has saved my life—or at least prevented serious head trauma—on several occasions. Specifically I am analyzing a GPA brand helmet that I currently wear when riding.

image via yourhorse.co.uk

The most essential level of ergonomics research is safety. If a product is unsafe, it can’t be sold or produced, no matter how beautiful, comfortable, or useful it is. A riding helmet’s primary function is safety. In the event of a fall, it protects the wearers head. It also prevents head injuries from low branches while riding on a trail. The durable construction made from packed foam and titanium allow for optimal safety. The protective materials are cushioned by foam and velvet, so as not to cut or irritate the riders head while wearing. Another notable safety feature is the adjustable chin strap, which custom fits to the riders head to be as effective as possible at keeping the rider safe. I can personally testify that this riding helmet has kept me safe several times. Therefore, it accomplishes its goal of safety.

Although durable, the helmet is also lightweight, which allows it to be comfortably worn even over the course of a long ride. The thick inner padding also allows for maximum comfort while also preventing the helmet from uncomfortably shifting around the wearers head. One especially uncomfortable feature about riding helmets is that they can tend to make the wearers head unpleasantly hot and sweaty. One comfort related feature I appreciate about this particular helmet is the cooling vents at the top and sides, so that air can flow through as one rides.

Generally speaking, a helmet is a fairly easy, self-explanatory object to use. The one aspect that can cause difficulty of use is adjusting the straps to fit ones head perfectly. Helmets I’ve worn in the past have had several different straps that often got tangled around each other and could easily become too tight or too loose. This helmet resolves those issues by combining the multiple straps in to one easily adjusted strap.

This helmet performs well by achieving its primary purpose—to prevent the wearers head from getting injured. I’ve had this helmet for several years and it continually works. Longevity is an important characteristic of a product. As mentioned in Objectified, objects should be designed to last, not to be disposed of. Despite accompanying me through many falls and close encounters with tree branches, I still trust this helmet to keep me safe.

The final level of ergonomic research is aesthetics. As helmets are a key part of the english rider’s show uniform, they are designed to look nice. Typically, all show helmets are made from velvet. This one features soft black velvet that despite being several years old has not faded or worn significantly. However, there are a few patches where it has been dropped that have caused the velvet to wear. In interest of improving the aesthetics of this object, one may want to design a way for the velvet exterior to be more durable and less likely to wear or show dirt. Another significant aesthetic feature is the titanium strip down the center. Not only does it offer the helmet a modern. streamlined look, but also serves to offer added protection and serve as a location for the aforementioned cooling vents.

Overall, this helmet is a well-designed object from an ergonomic perspective.

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Democratic Design

In the film Objectified, one of the designers asserts that "in the future, the tools to make design will be available to everybody." I believe that future is now.

image via spic.com

One would be hard pressed to find a modern American household—or a household any modernized country—that did not own at least one computer. Many households even have one computer per family member. Today's youth have grown up with computers and the internet their entire lives. Many of these computer users have access to photoshop or similar editing and/or design programs. Many of these photoshop users obtained their software from less than legal means, but ethics in design should be saved for another blog post entirely.

With the increased availability of computers and design software, design tools are becoming increasingly available to a wider audience. Also, the internet allows the user to have access to a wider variety of designs and designers then ever before. When browsing the internet, one is often bombarded with images—some well designed, and other poorly designed—and it can often be overwhelming.

Although design tools aren't available to literally every person on the planet, we as a culture are nearing the day when everyone is a designer. That is not to say that everyone is a necessarily refined or creative designer, but they possess the tools and the knowledge nonetheless. A surprising number of children under 15 know how to doctor photos. I could not find any official statistics on the matter, but in my own experience, I have been continually surprised at the number of children who can edit and manipulate photographs. In high school, this was an envied skill, as hordes of insecure girls rushed to the computer lab to mask their insecurities through photoshop.

I believe that for better or for worse, the era of design tools being readily available to everybody is upon us. Although it may increase competition for design jobs, the benefits of having so many fresh minds in the design realm will likely outweigh any costs.

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Visual Culture of our Times

This weekend I was able to visit SFMOMA for the first time. The experience was magical. Among all the rooms filled with works of art from the likes of Picasso, Mondrian, Magritte, and Lichenstein, I found myself most inspired by the room dedicated to graphic and industrial design.

As I entered the room, "SFMOMA has long considered industrial and graphic design, however quotidian or commercial, to be central to the visual culture of our times." was emblazoned on the wall. As someone pursuing a career in design, this especially resonated with me. Design plays a special role in both art and popular culture. Through graphic and industrial design, the designer essentially creates a time capsule of the period they are designing in. By looking back at graphic and industrial designs from eras past, we can get the most accurate idea of their life and mindset. Mass-produced everyday objects provide an insight in to the life of the owners that priceless, one-of-a-kind objects cannot. Similarly, these mass-produced objects give a better picture of a society as a whole, while handmade—which implies expensive—objects are almost always reserved for the wealthy upper-class exclusively and only gives the observer a look at a small demographic rather than the majority.

At the SFMOMA Excellent design is held in the same reverence as fine art. The mass-produced posters and industrial objects are hung with respect on the museum's walls. It was inspirational to see that good design—however commonplace—being acknowledged and immortalized.

Olivetti Typewriters are an incredible example of industrial design as well as the evolution and perfection of it. Each typewriter was displayed with a corresponding poster used to advertise the typewriter. These typewriters are an excellent example of both practical function and aesthetics. The posters' ability to mirror the aesthetics of the typewriter as well as appeal to the appropriate target audience is of a level that modern designers still aspire to.

The "Designing a Modern Brand" exhibit at the SFMOMA—although small in contrast to some of the other exhibitions, had a dramatic and inspiring effect on me and served to remind me why I love design so exponentially.