Response to :Week 3 Readings.

Most of this week's reading focuses on the turn that the design world is having.

• It is basing on how the design world started with men trying to produce fully functioning products and having much deep thought on how to build the product.
• A few of the other readings speak about how design and advertising is reaching some pretty disturbing lows in order to sell their stuff..but at the same time going against ethical rules.
• American apparel for example: is a sweatshop free company and American made. The conflicting idea of their reasoning is how to sell their company. They use sexually apauling images and force their workers to be this sexualized image to the public. So which is better..being a sweatshop free company or a sexualized working enviornment?
• The Responsibilities of the Design Profession: this article is focusing on the turn the design world is having. In very simple words, Herbert Spencer feels the new designers coming into this world no longer have the same skill, or intuition, or training to be successful designers because they are simply trying to do better than one another in the design world. He elaborated on "Artistic Printing" and how time and effort was placed into this process to produce successful printing. Designers were known as craftsmen back in the 19th century and were more dedicated to the functionality and reasoning behind a design. Basically put more thought and logic into every aspect of design. Herbert Spencer feels like none of those ideas are being worked on anymore and how art schools are just trying to train art students to prouduce aesthetically pleasing work and not necessarily "functional piece" for the user.
• Ethical Design Education: The main purpose of this article is to influence and give designers a push to realize how to utilize materials in their designs in an earth friendly type of way. Basically to be aware of the environment and how the materials in many of the products being made are harming the planet. They speak about fashion students being totally upset about animal fur used as a fashion icon. The world is described as an "ugly, polluted, mean placed ruled by greed and ego". The importance of craft is being left behind as well, designers are really relying on a lot of mass produced materials in designing things now rather than using a material to its full potential or the role it actually plays in nature. It speaks about the Bauhaus movement when materials were used to their full potential and products were made fully to that purpose. To idealize the material to its full potential for example; how a beautiful piece of wood could naturally bend to become an amazing piece of furniture.
• The whole First things First essays are based on this main idea. Graphic Design is being put into one main subject known as advertisement. But graphic designers refuse to be held under this one notion. Advertising is an easy way out; you are advertsing; you are pursuading people to buy an object; you are making something so insignificant such as toothpaste seem so appealing that you have to go out and buy it immediately. The designers who signed First things First in 1964 want people to know that designing an ad is not what makes their work succesful. There is a huge difference in making a design that succesfully transmits a message/information rather than a design that sells an idea. Funtion verses pursuasion..thats what it is really coming down to. Making an ad will not allow a designer to fully express his/her creativity. In some ways it may, but when creating an ad you have certain limitations you have to adhere to.