I've had the same bedspread for the last few years. It has stitched stripes. At the risk of revealing too much about
myself, I will tell you that I always make my bed in the morning. For me, that makes evening like my birthday where I get to open
a present to get into bed. Since
getting this spread, I
have very carefully lined up the stripes of the spread running the long way down the
bed. Over winter break my daughter was
home from school and slept in my bed. In
the morning I walked in and she had very considerately made it. Only she had the stripes running the other way,
across the bed. It turns out I had been
making the bed the wrong way the whole time.
The spread fit correctly her way. I now
make the bed this way, with the stripes running cross-ways, but it doesn't look right to me. The spread fits right but the stripes go the
wrong way. I feel like it makes the bed
look stubby.
This is a design thing.
Line is a fundamental element of design.
The most basic element. Line
leads the eye. I don't want to look back
and forth across my bed as if I were
reading a book. I want to take in the
length of the bed. I want to enjoy the
idea that I will be long and horizontal on the bed. I don't want myself all chopped up. The professional designer who designed my
spread obviously disagrees. Eh.
There are a few elements of design. There are also principles for the use of the
elements. Ideas about the effect of the
use of design elements. People study
this stuff for years, but I think all of us know the difference
intuitively. My drawing professor made
merciless fun of people who said I don't know anything about art but I know
what I like. What you like is what speaks to
you. It's okay to educate yourself about
art but it's also okay to like what you like.
Design is the same in some ways. We
all know when something is visually a bit off.
We also know when we feel comfortable in a space or with an object. All of us intuitively understand balance and
harmony in design and we understand emphasis.
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| This is the first thing designed by Philippe Starck that I loved the design of. It's just a juicer but it's so elegant. |
This doesn't mean that design needs to be predictable. One of my favorite designers is Philippe
Starck. I still feel bad about
correcting a snooty sales clerk in a furniture store who mispronounced his
name. Ok I feel a little bad. The clerk was one of those people who ... I
don't know, I'm sure the Germans have a word for it. Anyway, I love the work of Philippe Starck
because he redesigned common objects and made us look at them. He made us see. There's really nothing more magical than
that.
 |
| Which is not to say that he didn't fail. This is a tea pot and a function failure, but it's interesting to look at. |
We are so used to sitting in chairs and sleeping in beds,
eating with forks and cooking in pots, that we forget all the design work that
goes into all of these things. Making
things that look good and work is not easy.
Making people really see those things is even more difficult. All of us design. We decorate our homes. We set our tables. We pick sheets for our beds. Some of us are probably better at it than
others which is fine if it's your home or your sheets. If it's public, or if you make your living
doing it, you should understand what your choices say. Design choices like statements in art need to
be deliberate and conscious. I'm not saying
there can't be serendipity. I'm just
saying if you are being paid to do something you should think about and understand what you
are doing.
There's an interchange in Las Vegas where four lanes of
traffic are forced to squeeze into a single lane to access a highway. There is no time, day or night, where this
bottleneck isn't moving at a crawl. The
funny thing is, there is room for another lane.
Maybe I don't see the future plans for this traffic spot, but it seems
like bad design to me. I think most
people would agree.
 |
| It's probably not possible to see the giant mess that the design of this interchange creates. |
 |
| You can get a sense from the map and satellite view though. |
I don't think there is any real difference between designing
a traffic interchange and designing a chair or a living room. Function is the primary focus of designing
something functional, but even that can be overdone. Often design isn't good because the single
object is forced to have too many functions.
Witness the sofa bed. They are
usually terrible places to sit and worse places to try to sleep. The metaphorical jack of all trades master of
none.
If you pay attention you can get a huge amount of information from design. You can learn what the designer wants to emphasize, what the designer values, and how the designer wants you to feel. Design can direct your eye and your heart. You can be told without a word that something has value or that it is cheap. Look at the Tiffany's window vs. the Woolworth window (another thing learned in school). Clutter in design, too much information, usually says cheap. Clutter is not the same as detail. Detail creates value. That single piece of jewelry in the Tiffany's window has exquisite detail.
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| It was a little bit hard for me to find a window display from Tiffany, but this is one. It tells one story. |
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| I don't know if there are any Woolworth stores left. The windows have a lot of stuff. |
I'm thinking about design a lot lately as I try to navigate
how to present my work to the public. I
don't really want to work in a vacuum. I
do, but it's not really my goal. As I
move forward, I will need to apply good design to remaking my website, creating
my work, and creating a public presence.
Even if my work is art, and as
I've said before I'm confused on that front, I will still need to use deliberate and good
design to present my work. And I will
have to own it. I will have to take
control. Trickier than you might think
for someone who is temperamentally a Luddite like hermit.
Scale being one of the elements of design, I think I will
start there. Micro. That's the scale I am starting with. I'll let you know how it goes. Look for a new website from me in the next
couple of months. This will be a huge challenge for me because I need to figure out the primary function of my website and not try to make it have too many functions. I don't want the Swiss army knife of websites, but I don't want to have multiple sites either. Once it's up I hope you will comment on the
design. Let me know what you think. Also look around and be a critic of all the
design you encounter. Also, soon I will have a
new bedspread. Those stripes are making me nuts.
Back to work. I have
much to do
j
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