Necessary Requirements

Packaging

There are certain elements on packaging of products in particular that are required to be present without necessarily looking the most attractive. I am talking about the bar code. However, I have noticed on the Lee Stafford range of hair care products that they use the bar code as part of the design of their packaging.

If you think about it, the bar code design does actually have some interesting potential and not many products use this to their advantage. The use of the bar code as part of the design is actually extremely simple in this example, with the barcode not being the usual black lines on white background but colour coded with the remainder of the package. This is a simple yet effective change with the ‘boring barcode’ already becoming a bit more interesting. Furthermore certain lines of the barcode are extended outside of the limiting white box across the rest of the bottle. Another simple yet noticeable change.

This could be extended further perhaps with the extended lines morphing into more elegant floral patterns for instance-an idea that could be particularly relevant to female hair care products. I am surprised that more packaging does not incorporate the bar code into their designs…if it has got to be there- it may as well be put to good design use!

Bupa Healthcare

Bupa Healthcare Adverts

The recent Bupa adverts include the use of basic shapes to explain various medical situations. I love the juxtaposition of something so complex such as health and medical issues being explained using the sheer simplicity of basic geometric shapes.

The shapes represent characters with health issues and the advert is basically a short story of a particular shape being helped out by the Bupa Healthcare service. For example, a circle with a spinal problem- soon fixed by using the Bupa Healthcare service.

It is a great way of promoting that their way of dealing with healthcare issues is simple and easy to understand.

Using Your Senses

It's More Than Sight

A nightclub near my home town has recently been refurbished in light of the recent smoking ban in public spaces. Apparently since the ban has been brought in, certain unpleasant smells that had previously been masked by the smell of smoke have come to light. The Liquid nightclub has installed a ‘smell system’ which can pump out smells into the rooms of the club including the smells of cut grass, roses and perfume fragrances. This also allows them to use certain smells to fit in with their themed nights. For example they have suggested on Valentines night they will pump out fragrances of roses and chocolates to fit in with the mood.

I think this is a really interesting idea and as designers we concentrate on our sense of sight the majority of the time instead of using other senses. Granted it is extremely difficult to incorporate the sense of smell in the majority of designs, but particularly with regards to the design of architecture I think this is an innovative way of getting people to use their other senses when they interact with a design.

I think the idea of sound is also greatly underestimated in design. Radio is still a great way to advertise products and this method doesn’t even involve the typical use of sight. I just think that it is important to consider all the senses when trying to get people to interact with designs.

Local Design

Local Design

I visited Brighton the other day which is renowned for being the gay capital of England and everywhere you looked there were rainbow flags- popularised as a symbol of gay pride and diversity. However, I also noticed something that I haven’t noticed in a lot of other places- an element of local design.

When I was walking around, the ‘to let’ or ‘for sale’ signs outside houses and flats were embracing the rainbow flag. Granted, the normal estate agent signs aren’t exactly the most eye-catching pieces of design- you wouldn’t normally look at them and take any kind of notice as to the design of them but I thought it was really good to see a support of the local community through the display of designs in the surrounding area.

Action Art

Action Art

Should we be so precise and regimented in our way of working?

“Action art n. A style of abstract painting that uses techniques such as the dribbling or splashing of paint to achieve a spontaneous effect.”

Art critic, Harold Rosenberg coined the term ‘Action Art’ by shifting the emphasis from the object presented in the painting to the struggle to complete the painting itself.

Rosenberg in effect redefined the ‘meaning’ of art by saying that it was ‘an act rather than an object, a process rather than a product’. A brave statement. But as designers we are definitely interested in the PROCESS of creating pieces, so is the meaning the most important thing?

Action artists are so fresh and exciting- creating pieces of art through mistakes and chance. You can be so free and excitable when creating a piece of Action Art, so can we not take this way of thinking through to other areas of art and design? Can great designs come about due to accidents? I think it can. The only problem is that I think that we feel too constrained nowadays. This probably has something to do with the fact that we are being marked for what we produce at the moment and there will always be a reason for us to restrain ourselves from being THAT free with our work, but it doesn’t mean to say that we can’t take risks.

One thing I admire most about Action Art is the originality and novelty that it brings to art. The fact that you can use anything in order to create your work and through being able to use absolutely anything, it is almost impossible to predict what exact marks will be made on the canvas. For example, Yves Klein who used naked women covered in paint and being dragged around the canvas as his source of mark making. This is an exceptionally innovative way of making marks on a page and is a certain way to grab media attention.

Damien Hirst created ‘Spin paintings’ by placing his canvas on a spinning table and the paint being layered on whilst the table is spinning. I find it incredible how an artist can create such paintings by not even physically touching the canvas itself.

Jackson Pollock is probably the most famous artist to grace Action Art with his lively canvases being splashed with colour. He would literally take buckets of paint and throw them at the canvas yet so many of his paintings look like beautiful pieces of ‘organised mess’!

I just think that mistakes aren’t always bad and maybe we should sometimes allow ourselves to go a little bit crazy and take a few risks in our designs!

Boyle Family

‘Art should not exclude anything as a potential subject’
- The Boyle Family

The Boyle Family are a family of collaborative artists based in London- Mark Boyle & Joan Hills who met in Harrogate and their children Sebastian & Georgia Over the years they have worked with many artists, performers, musicians, filmmakers & dancers including Jimi Hendrix & the psychedelic jazz-rock pioneers Soft Machine. The family experimented with such a variety of media and more importantly had fun in doing so. This included performances and events, films and projections, sound recordings, photography, electron-microphotography, drawing, assemblage, painting, sculpture and installation.

Whilst researching them over the years I have come to love their outlook on art and design, ‘art that does not exclude anything as a potential subject’. Growing up with an interest in art I discovered a weird fascination…road markings. I don’t know what sparked this but especially in recent years I have just found them so raw and interesting. They vary so much and now with a knowledge of programmes such as Photoshop- you can manipulate images of them to create really interesting outcomes. Anyway! My art teacher recommended I research into other artists with an interest in this area and that’s when I discovered the Boyle family. Over the years they have concentrated on so many subjects, some of them being: earth, air, fire and water; animals, vegetables and minerals; insects, reptiles and water creatures; human beings and societies.

Their best known work, however, continues to be their Journey to the Surface of the Earth which they begun in 1964 and is an ongoing set of strange and interesting work. This work includes different projects from around the world including; the London Series, Tidal Series, Thaw Series, Japan Series and their lifelong project, the World Series.

'London Series' and 'Cobbles Study'

'Concrete Pavement study' and 'New York Study'

'Street Study outside School' and 'Tidal Series'

What is even more interesting is how they choose what to include in each of the series. Each section of work consists of a square of ground which is cast on the spot of a particular location. The way they decide upon a spot is great. They would display a map of the world on a wall and visitors would then be blindfolded and be asked to throw a dart at the map. Wherever the dart landed is where they would undertake their next piece of artwork. I think it’s such a refreshing approach. Sometimes, we are given a project to do and have no idea of where to start- this idea certainly solves that problem.’They attempt to present a slice of reality as they found it at the moment of selection’.Of the course the world is always changing so their work will never be a permanent and accurate representation of the world in which we live…but it was true at the time.

I personally find their work refreshing and interesting as I have a strange love for ‘natural’ art, but the way in which they work and their philosophy on art and design is so different and unusual it just makes them all the more interesting!


http://www.boylefamily.co.uk/

Barcelona

Barcelona

Antoni Gaudi

When I went to Barcelona a few years ago, I was amazed by the Gaudi buildings in the city. They are certainly not the style of buildings you would expect to come across in any city and I became fascinated in particular by the unfinished church.

In first year one week we were asked to bring in an example of what we thought was a piece of great design. I bought in evidence of the ‘Sagrada Familia’ or ‘Church of the Holy Family’.

I am fascinated with this unique style of architecture and how unreal it seems. When I first saw the buildings I thought that they looked like they should be in a fictional book or film, they seemed like fairytale buildings. There was something I found childlike about them and I remember specifically comparing them to what I thought Hansel and Gretel’s confectionary house would look like. It must have been something to do with the amount of colour in Park Guell and the curvature of some of the buildings around here.


When I saw the Sagrada Familia, I was in awe. The amount of detail present on the building was unreal and I remembered thinking ‘no wonder this isn’t finished yet!’. There was not a single millimetre of that building that hadn’t gone through careful and detailed planning and I was absolutely amazed by that.

The building began in 1882 and work has been undergone on the construction non-stop since then yet it is still not expected to be completed for another 80 years. Gaudi participated himself until he died in 1926 but work has still continued.

The amazing thing about that building was that no building could come close to replicating that-it was the definition of unique which is why I personally think it is the greatest piece of design.


For information and photographs of some of his work
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Antonio_Gaudi.html