Vanishing Tradition

I’m really fascinated with the idea of the vanishing tradition. Many people took what they have for granted. People get so lazy now that they leave everything to machines to do all the work for them, making it more convenient. Because of this that we now have vanishing tradition that can no longer be produce or look at again, it can’t even be replaced by machine. 

For example, the designs of Chinese outfits in the 13^th century and the 14^th century cannot be made again because no one knows how to make it. Even people now can’t program machines to make it. The outfits then were all handmade and produce by people. Silk robes that emperors wore where made from the silk of silkworms, threading it all together by hand to make robes for the emperors. They are being less and less produced now with the fact that the older generation are getting older and are incapable and the newer generation or unwilling or unable to learn. It requires so much hard work that only a hand full of people in china still does it, others prefer machines.

These silk robes are so rare to see, worn, or produce that many of them have been preserve in museums or other archives to give the public an idea of how it looks like. Something so significant in the Chinese tradition and it is being forgotten so easily. The quality of it has been degraded instead of being improved. When you want to shop for a silk robe or a Chinese outfit, it’s rare to see an actually silk robe with complicated designs such as the old ones does. All you see today are machine printed or machine generated designs that are exactly alike. Meanwhile the actually handmade ones are more unique and different from what machines generated are like.

Comparison and Contrast

When I was a child, the books that caught my attention the most were the Dr. Seuss books. The illustrations and designs of the characters and the cover were so unique and detailed. The characters are unrealistic demonstrating the idea of fantasy and imagination. The human in the Dr. Seuss books were design out of proportion from the realistic human which makes it more enjoyable. The design of the Cat in the Hat was so well known that it became a signature like figure for the Dr. Seuss books.  These books were design to help young children to learn counting, numbers, colors, etc… in a more intriguing way with the illustrations. 

 

Another book that brings out the same idea of design as Dr. Seuss did is the book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. The design of the cover portrays a huge creature sleeping in the forest as a small boat is approaching from the sea. The creatures are unrealistic and just help convey the idea of imagination and fantasy.

 

What these two authors and illustrators have in common is that both of their book designs have the same goal, bring out imagination and fantasy in a child. The characters in the books look hairy and surreal. The characters are also personified, giving a voice to every character so they can communicate with one another in the story. The contrasts of these two designs are that Dr. Seuss’ designs of his characters are more abstract than the design of Maurice Sendak. Sendak’s designs are more precise and detailed, catching the characteristics of a real creature or a real person more accurately. Meanwhile Dr. Seuss characters are abstract and the creatures that are being portray looks more cartoon.

Design as Conversation

Design is a conversation between the designer and the customer or whoever that is interested in the design. It is use to communicate the designer’s ideas of their design and how it works to the person of interests. Or it can be a conversation between the design itself and a designer. The old design may be tempting the designer to make it more new, more advance, and more capable than it was before. If it’s as conversation between a designer and its customer then the designer is trying to convince the customer to pay attention to it and to purchase it.

The design of things will keep advancing from what was made before or in the past. Such ask bell bottoms becoming boot cut jeans, skinny jeans becoming more skinny and tighter, type writers becoming computers, computers advancing to a higher degree, black and white photo turns to colors, color photos becoming high quality, then becoming three dimensional, etc…. Design will keep on rolling and advancing from past designs. Each time a design is innovated or changed into something more advance it is because the design needs to be upgraded and tempt the designer to improve it. The designer wants to improve it to satisfy the audience or customers. Telling them this “new” designer is better than the old one in many ways. In which leads to advertising and how the design of advertising works. How it is thought out, how the designed product itself says so much in an advertisement without anyone saying “this is much better than what it was before.The video below is an example.

Of course the design of advertisement is to convince the audience into purchasing the product that is being advertised.  Even when seeing something for the first time and testing it out for the first time, the first question that comes to mind is “why is it design like this?” It could easily be figured out after testing it out that it was design this way or that way because of this or that to make it work. That is how the design start a conversation with whomever it is that try to figure it out. 

The way how design is a conversation with the designer is, the designers can it in a different way from what it is. The designer can make changes to it and make it different from what it seem to be what it is. Just like an illusion, something may appear to be as it is, but turns out to be something else. That is an idea of design, telling us that it is more than what it seems to be. How design communicates to innovate from one thing to another is up to the designer to see if they can see what can be improve. The video below demonstrate and illusion of design and how many objects around us can be design into thing that seem to be one thing but is another. In the video the CD looks like they are spinning in which they are not, it seem to be basically the light reflecting on the CD which makes it look like its spinning.