Shoot, I'm left over from last night...
I'll try to keep it under control.
I'll be gentle, dear...
I've wanted to respond to this thread again, but haven't had time. Hope it's still around when I do. But in the meanwhile, remember to think outside The Box. That is what makes some Oriental and Scandinavian designs so interesting.
Thanks,
Greg G.
a clever stringing together of words, but functionally bullshit.
"the arrangement of elements" is succint, to the point and clear. it's what design is all about.
trancendental meditation as a furniture making disclipine... : )
Actually, Bridge, I meant it to be a one word response to the call for definition.
I think that the intent to design is the intent to manage chaos.
Certainly there have to be parameters that will be applied.
But, I figure that the general intent of design is to take us out of the chaotic world of experience, and into the world of managed priorities.
The priorities may be multivalent, and the valences would have assigned values.
If I want to design a kitchen, I would assign a higher priority to function, if I were designing for a cook - but I have designed kitchens for people who would never do more than boil water in the space.
These were Show kitchens, intended to impress their fellows - I designed them to look good, following the glossy magazine crap that was currently purveyed in the designer level rags.
If someone wanted a wall to encompass their stereo and TV, I would try to manage the chaos according to their needs.
Let's take this to a different level.
Let's say that you are a GUI designer.
You have a given level of functionality that you must present.
It really needs to be graded according to importance.
This gradation must be available on a graphic level.
The user's relationship to the object must be intuitive.
Oh, and for a minute I didn't think that I was talking about furniture.
Silly me.
Tom Watson - WoodDorker tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (email)
Don't forget the negative spaces. One can do subtle things with the space not occupied by the wood.
[snipping from different posts:]
"Graphic Design" used to be called "business art." (Still is, as long as there aren't any business artists around to poke you in the eye with a stylus.)
Post-Modern crap, possibly. Real art most certainly does have a function; it's just not tangible.
Milwaukee Art Museum had an Arts&Crafts exhibition recently. (Maybe the exhibit is showing elsewhere now?) One piece was a Finnish sideboard of birch, alder and pearwood. It was stained with greens and golds. The piece was large, yet didn't overpower because of the grain and color variations. Sure, it was a Box, but the verticals were curved to break the boxiness.
Nah. The psychoacoustic boffins do some amazing things. Enhanced stereo comes to mind. Contrast that with a mono speaker.
Precisely my point...they couldn't that if audio waves were constrained to 2D ...
Boy I guess I really misspoke when I said that music does not occupy space. I should know better, I have personally sat in front of the mixing board adjusting the stereo pan of each track.
Dragging this back onto topic a bit.... a songwriter "designing" his or her "art" isn't particularly concerned (unless, maybe you're Pink Floyd producing a live show) with spacial sound placement.
That's sort of like saying that the choosing Waterlox vs Minwax wipe-on poly is a design decision.
In the strictest sense, it is but it's pretty minor.
-Steve
I think "interacting" is necessary to this. Think of children's blocks: you can arrange them all sorts of different ways (ooh, that calculation would have an answer much larger than 42) but it is the way they work together to affect some goal that determines whether you have a genius on your hands...
"Purpose" is a little less definite (or meaningful?), as you can have the most abstract things in mind as you design...
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