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DESMA 10 Lecture Notes
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Lecture One- Reading design = understanding reality
Path to design understanding:
1. Observation
2. Analysis
3. Knowledge
4. Understanding
- Design culture is everywhere and influences everything we do, it even penetrates our
dreams
- There are no isolated facts in design culture. Everything is produced, used and
interpreted in contexts
- Design means different things depending on who is doing, looking, listening, talking, and
thinking
- To understand design and design culture we must always consider the contexts they are
part of
- We live in a world of “snippet logic” - online info comes in snippets, requiring quick and
repeated reactions. The snippets come and go, appear and disappear
- Snippets may seem discrete units but they are parts of an endless flow
- They exist within contexts, even on social media
- They are sent out by someone and we must peek behind the snippet to learn what it is
part of, what it is used for and by whom
- We need critical awareness of design, the many forms it takes, and the many purposes it
serves
- Design culture is not limited to online culture, it is much more extensive, and its history
goes back in thousands of years
- Every culture on planet earth is also a design culture with a long history of its own
- Design token of luxury and privilege
- Is design culture a fantasy world for the rich, the famous, and the beautiful?
- Is design culture made-up of artificial culture heroes and role models to identify with?
- Global capitalism and its powerful marketing machineries promote luxury design as a
fetish for the millions
- Luxury design only a minor part of design culture, and not actually a part of most
people’s lives
- Disegno (italian) = to draw
- During italian renaissance disegno was used as a way of planning paintings and served
as instructions for master painter’s helpers
- 1540s: designare, “mark out, devise, choose, designate, appoint.”
- 1550s: desseign (thoughts must be “marked out”)
- Da vinci’s technical drawings are designs for unrealized machines
- Idea of god as the “supreme designer” is an ancient motif that can be found from many
cultural traditions
- Ideology of “intelligent design” which is part of creationism, relies on such an idea, as
opposed to the theory of evolution
, - Pattern books collect and preserve designs in the form of drawings and fabric samples
- Pattern books are repositories of models for production. The designs can be used as
such or modified
- Pattern books serve in design education. They preserve knowledge, helping to pass
ideas from master to students. Pattern books are the visual “memory” data banks of
design culture
- Examples of pattern books: tattoo art books, cookbooks
- Design is “human capacity to shape without precedent in nature” (is it?)
- Designs can disappear or be modified
- South Africa's Zulu people famous for their tight and colorful ukhamba baskets. They
have invented a new kind of basket, imbenge, woven by recycling discarded telephone
wire
- Mexican home altars as domestic design
- Elements of nature and design objects have been combined
- “Bricolage” is a composition made by combining pre-existing things and objects. A
bricolage sends a message for those who can read it. It may have been made by a
single creator or by many.
- The word introduced by Claude Levi-Strauss in his book “Wild Thought”
- Bricoloage is a common method in everyday design
- A way of messaging by combining objects, the relationships between the combined
elements are essential for the message. The elements of a bricolage are “signs” and the
bricolage is a “sign complex”. A bricolage always has a context, which gives us “keys” to
its meaning.
- A bricolage fluctuates between order and chaos, some elements are orderly, others may
be random, chaos tends to take over and must be put back into order
- Anonymous bricolage on the streets of la: stickers and stenciled images are posted on
surfaces like backsides of traffic signs. They form sign complexes that require special
knowledge to be understood
- Urban “palimpsest” - messages layered on top of each other. Deeper layers remain
partly visible and readable.
- Traffic signals are often deformed or modified because of their high visibility, they attract
gazes.
- Palimpsest refers to layering: a text written over another text, which has been partly
erased. This happened in the middle ages to handwritten/copied books. Writing surfaces
were rare, so they were recycled.
- The parchment (vellum) could be reused, earlier texts were erased and new ones written
over them. This practive has saved many rare early texts, which would otherwise have
disappeared. The underlying text can still be seen and restored.
- Design is not just about making things, but about observing them and their meanings
- We can learn about everyday design by practicing “psychogeography”. This is wandering
through the city to investigate its designs and to redefine them. An aimless long walk, but
sometimes with a predefined plan or goal.
- Situationist international - revolutionary group in 1957 france w the purpose to create
situations, constructed encounters and creatively lived moments in specific urban
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