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.

Our Inspiration

What inspire me to do art may be the same things that inspire other great artists. In every art piece of work, the artist does not create it to be about himself/herself, it’s usually about the things around them, their environment, surroundings, how they feel, what they see, etc… Like many other artists I am inspire by the many different kinds of arts around the world coming from different cultures. All cultures have a fascinating artistic background that is known throughout the world today. Examples and designed masks inspired by African masks are sold everywhere, Japanese kimonos, Chinese china collections, Indian pattern blankets, etc… All the art and design around the world inspire tourist, artists, designer, and architecture to make what they made. The world is filled with arts and designs. The designs from American designers came from designs from the past. So these designs from around the world and designs from the past inspire me to want to create something new, innovate a design from something has been created and make it better.

           

            Japanese Kimono                                                                  China Collection

  

         Indian Blanket                                                                                                            African mask

Creativity from Without

What is art? Does art have to relate to the artist? Art is about inspiration and that is how it is created.  What inspire great artists from all over the world and from the past? It can be just about anything, it can be their everyday lives, what they eat, what they see, how they feel, what they like, what attracted them, and so on. The art does not have to be about the artist inner self. Dale Chihuly is an artist who is inspired by Native American Trade Blankets because of its colorful designs and patterns. His recreated what is similar to the trade items of Indians and display them in a museum to show how the items look like. 

Stone Soup

The purpose of Stone Soup is to bring people together to create something extraordinary. In the book Stone Soup, the characters are suppose to make soup out of stone, but in the process of making it, everyone add in something to make it better, in which the result was not a disappointment. We made our own stone soup just that it’s not actually soup, but we utilize the idea and use crafts and are materials to create an art piece. Everyone brought something from home to be used in the process of Stone Soup. Our group decided that we will make an abstract tree on a light pole. We start out with the trunk and continue to ad branches and design to make it look more abstract and unique from a regular tree. 

 Everyone working together

The branches were made from cardboard and rubber bike tires, while the leaves are bows and papers. What makes the abstract tree extraordinary was the small box covering the trunk of the tree.  That gave us a new name and explanation of the tree. We called it the Tree out of the Box and when you look at the box it is very small and out of proportion for the huge tree. Our explanation for that is, something big and extraordinary can come out of something really small, presenting the idea of the quote, “Big things, comes in small packages.”

my bow made out of someone's jean.

Candy Design

When you look at candy, do you ever wonder, why does it look like that? Why is it design in that way? Candies come in many shapes and sizes and in many colors. They are design in various ways that will attract the customers’ attention. For example, I just bought a bag of Gummi Candy Trolli Sour Brite Crawler Eggs from a convenient store. The reason why I bought it was because of the design of the candy. They are in small egg shapes, colorful and small bite size. Or some people may describe it as “cute”. It’s less complicated than eating a gummy warm. If you want to eat a gummy warm but want to take just one bite off of it, you still have to hold on to the other half. As for the Crawler eggs, you just have to pop one or two in your mouth without dirtying your fingers or hands; it is less of a hassle.