Designers Don’t Discriminate

*Image Prerna Dudani

People today tend to group designers into specific fields of design such as fashion, graphic, interior etc. I had a colleague the other day claim that he could identify what design emphasis each student in our design class had just by looking at what they wear or how they arrange their notes. He claimed that the people who usually dressed chic and had messy notes were going into fashion designing while the people who were very put together and arranged their notes very well were going into interior design. But is this really true? Are fashion designers categorized only by clothes and interior designers only by order? NO and again NO!!

According to Professor Housefield, the Introduction to Design professor at UC Davis, each designer is like a Lego piece in the LegoLand world that is the design. We (designers) can be attached, detached and re-assembled to fit the needs of a certain project. We are not costume designers or web designers, we are just designers. We are Lego’s that have become part of a world that is bigger than one title or category: the design world.

The design world is not only constantly changing and evolving, but it is also getting increasingly connected. The design world of the 21^st century is broader and encompasses all sectors of society from business to science to the arts. In this 21^st century where globalization and the internet has made the world a smaller place, we as designers cannot pigeon-hole ourselves, to use Professor Housefield’s words. We can’t pretend that we don’t know much about fashion or graphics because as members (Legos) of the design world it is our job to know, and as members of society it is duty to know. As we have found out with the mortgage meltdown, each sector of society is connected to one another. So what happens in one part of the society affects all parts of that society. What’s happening in the fashion world can affect what happens in the graphic or interior world, or what’s happening in the justice world can affect the architectural designers’ world. So cannot label ourselves or discriminate between the different area of design because in the end we are all connected; we not only one plastic Lego piece in LegoLand but a Mickey Mouse in Disney World!

(The analogy here is that Lego Land represents the Design world and we are just a small piece of it, and Disney World represents the entire world and we are just a Mickey Mouse, a symbol that is abundant in Disney World and that has many forms eg. logos, rides, hats etc.).

Design needs Balance, Unity and a Focal Point (3D Design)

According to Hiedi Klum, “In fashion one day your in and the next day your out!” This was the case in the 9^th episode of this season’s Project Runway when a designer was kicked out of the competition. The designer’s name was Shirin Askari and her crime was sending a badly put together black gown down the runway.

The challenge given to the designers was to create a stage costume for the pop star Christiana Aguilera, and to be inspired by Bob Mackie, a legendary costume designer. The black gown shown above was Shirin’s answer to the design challenge. The gown was criticized by the judges; one even called it “a witch’s costume without the hat.” Even Tim Gunn, the mentor of the designers found it to be “student work.”

So what was so wrong with this dress that led the designer to be cut from the competition? It was the lack of unity, the use to two focal points and an unbalance in this design that led to the cut.

There was a disconnect between the top and bottom half of the dress. The top was very structured, especially on the neckline which had angular crisscross lines, and the bottom half flowed and had frayed strips of cloth. There is no transition in the center of the dress in the form of a belt or something that balanced the hard angular look on top with the soft flowy look on the bottom. The judges noticed these two conflicting views and not able to unify the two different aspects.

The lack of unity was also due to the fact that the gown had two competing focal points; the neckline and the bottom skirt. Both fight for the viewer’s attention. This creates unbalance thus the lack of equilibrium leaves the viewer uneasy and dissatisfied.

The bottom skirt eventually wins the battle for our attention because of its sheer weight; the strips of fabric make the bottom seem heavy in comparison to the top. This lends to the effect of imbalance as the top is fairly lightweight. Furthermore, the sudden introduction of the white sequence strips on the bottom, a color which is not repeated anywhere on the top of the dress, also adds to the sense of disconnect. Putting in white, a contrasting color to the predominantly black emphasizes the pulling apart of the design by the viewer.

This is an example of what happens when a designer ignores the fundamentals of design. If only Shirin had remembered the Gestalt principles of how to achieve unity in a design, she would have been in instead of out!

Image and quotes provided by:

http://www.mylifetime.com/on-tv/shows/project-runway

and Lifetime Television

Gestalt, Graffiti and Design (2D Design)

On the train ride from Davis to the Bay Area, you notice a shift in landscape when you hit Berkeley. No, I’m not talking about the hippies I’m talking about the graffiti. One of the first things you notice when you take a train ride into an urban city area is the graffiti that lines the walls of tunnels, trains and building. At the time of the ride I was reading about Gestalt psychology and I wondered if the two were related…Gestalt is the psychology of visual perception, it is the principle of the “unified whole”. It means that when we look at something we first see the whole picture, and then we find patterns to unify the image. So, our mind is constantly seeking to find unity in so called “random” images. While looking out the window I couldn’t help but notice how the graffiti artists knowingly or unknowingly were applying this psychology to take advantage of our perception!

Graffiti many times is viewed from car windows or through moving trains, so the artist knows that their piece will only be viewed for a couple of seconds. Their job is conveying a message to the viewer within that time frame. Thus, they apply many Gestalt techniques such as proximity, repetition, and generalization to make the job of the viewer easier. So that the viewer is able to make the connections, distinguish a pattern, unify the image and get the message in a few seconds.

The graffiti letters in the “Angel” image are very stylized and could be unreadable if separated, but because they are so close in proximity to each other we can discern that a string of letters is actually a word. Also, the artist uses not only repetition of color and style but he/she also uses continuity as each letter is configured in such a way that our eye travels smoothly from one to another. Lastly, the arrows are used to unify the letters into one coherent image.

Finally, we are able to understand the idea of the artist because we can relate to the image. This is the case in the second image above. The graffiti artist depicts the person in a cartoony generalized way and according to Gestalt the more generalized a face is the more we see ourselves in it. This is because our perception of ourselves and our face (when we’re not looking in a mirror) is fairly general. So when we see a cartoony face or image we can relate to because we see ourselves in it. So, the second graffiti artist uses this technique to get the viewer to relate to the image/understand their message.

Good graffiti art can create quite an impact on the viewer in just a matter of seconds because it utilizes the uses principles of Gestalt psychology to unify an image and get the message across…much like good design.

Images courtesy of: (in order)

http://media.photobucket.com/image/graffiti/angel21_01/3674918058_8c7cd7492e.jpg?o=185

http://media.photobucket.com/image/graffiti/minhnguyen_01/4rum/graffiti_art18.jpg?o=181