Blog assignment 3

Beauty + Utility

“Construction
 should 
be 
decorated. 
Decoration 
should 
never 
be

 purposely
constructed.” Owen Jones stated this quote in his book the 
Grammar 
of 
Ornament 
(1856). It means that the design of the object should reflect its purpose and not represent anything else. This was a major aspect of design in the 19^th century when A.W.N Pugin created his principles of design.

I agree that decoration should never be purposely constructed. As designers we should be given the freedom to design what ever we want and to try to appeal to target audience in their own way.

Bellow is an example of decoration constructed. It is a USB drive which is given the form of Yoda from the star wars movies. USB drives are designed to be used for holding information. Yoda doesn’t have anything to do with the purpose of a USB drive. When the designer of this USB drive was designing this device he was thinking about his target audience and not the actual purpose of the USB drive.

I believe that this is a good example on why designers shouldn’t 100% follow Pugins principles of design and the quote said by Jones because in the design it gives the designer his own personal mark on it. If a USB drive was just to look like a USB drive it would be a small plane rectangular object which is quite boring.
Pugin designed several dinner plates which had pictures of wheat on it which shows that the plates is it be used for bread, and nothing else. This is telling the user that there is only 1 real way in which you should use this plate.

http://www.legitreviews.com/news/6784/

DSDN 171 blog assignment 2

The continuing curve

An example of the continuing curve in history is the architectural designs of the Parthenon, Athens (448-432 BC) and the Pantheon, Rome, 126 AD. They are many years apart from each other yet they both still follow similar designs.  I believe that is a result of sensuous impulse. They both have several columns in the design of the buildings and both have large triangular parts in their structure. I believe that the Pantheon was designed from the aesthetics of the Parthenon.  The Parthenon was a successfully structure not just because of what it was built with but also the way it looks. Much like the Parthenon, the Pantheon is a very beautiful piece of architecture. Between their times there were many different building designs which are very different to both of these structures. But the ‘pendulum’ of design always swings back to past designs. Looking back to the past designs of buildings and finding out what worked well in those times can help designers in the future with their designs.

Photos taken from Wikipedia

DSDN 171 blog assignment 1

An important design example

The Laptop

The first commercially available portable computer was available in 1975. Ever since then the laptop has revolutionized the way we used computers. For designers, the laptop is a great thing to use because they are compact and can be taken anywhere and they can have all the programs, which designers need to get their work to excellent standards.