Blog Post - My Standpoint

“May the lessons we learn from history, and the stories we create, connect constructively with the chaos and complexity that is the ever evolving experience of each participant” (Smythe, 2011) This is a quote I found that emphasises the importance of history which is something that I really want to express in my stop motion film ad it am looking into the design stream of cultural and context. I decided on focussing on the idea of the importance of design history and how it has influenced and let us into the design we see today. Especially within the digital age we live in today so often people are to busy looking into the future and what is coming next to remember that it is just a necessary to look back and appreciate what has got us this far.

In my design I want to express my viewpoint by having the history of design re created out of sculptures made from the pages of books. Using the knowledge I have learnt from the 171 design lectures each of the sculptures will be somehow be significant to the design eras we have studied starting from the Greek Parthenon to the digital era of technology such as ipods and phones that we live in today and a sculpture to represent the future to show that history, like technology is constantly growing and developing. I also want to hint at the idea that the digital era we live in is distracting us from the importance of history by making us focus to much on the future. To show this I want to incorporate a person who is distracted by technology (e.g. ipod or phone) and therefore leave the book which all the sculptures will come out of behind, however, to symbolise the greatness of history the person will then come back and retrieve the book to show they have remembered.

An example we looked at in class of how history has influenced design of today is the Parthenon verses the Iphone. This connection stretches from 400BC to today however the influence of the classical style of the parthenon on the Iphone is apparent in the simplicity, straight lines, and monochromatic color pallet. This is a prime example of why history is so vital to the survival of great design.



References:


Smythe, Michael. 2011. Random House Group. New Zealand By Design.Print