Author: Patrick Rogers (Page 2 of 2)

Something that really struck me from the Futurist Manifesto by Marinetti is that so many people want to glorify war.  In the manifesto, Marinetti mentions that “we want to glorify war”, and he also mentions patriotism and contempt for women.  As I was reading all that I thought, wow, that sounds a lot like the contemporary far right extremists in our country.  I think it is so incredibly sad that many people choose not to glorify peace.  Why would anyone want life to be more violent than it already is?  Makes me think of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who did several really famous performance art pieces to glorify peace.

Also in the Futurist Manifesto, Marinetti states that he wants to “demolish museums and libraries”.  I think that is so obviously a colossally bad idea, because if one forgets the past, one is bound to repeat the past.  I mean, my god, what was Marinetti thinking?  This whole manifesto comes across quite petulant and immature to me.  And I don’t know how it’s a good idea to glorify manufacturing cars etc. and then also want to destroy things like museums and libraries and undermine the foundations of venerable towns.  What fun would it be to drive those cars through desecrated hollowed out cities and towns?

I also did not care for the Constructivist Manifesto by Rodchenko et al.  Their whole stance against art and focus on technology is lame as far as I’m concerned.  Why can’t art mix with things like science and technology?  For one thing, they each can be used for combinatory play, one for the other, which can be extremely useful for unlocking new ideas in either.

Immutability and mutability of the sign was something I found really interesting about the Saussure reading.  Immutability of course means no one specific person, nor the society at large, can at will change the language.  Although I must add, wouldn’t it be so cool if we could?  We could as a society vote on changes we want to make to the English language.  Now that would probably get ugly fast, but how much fun it would be!  Mutability refers to how the language changes over time due to changes in the culture at large.  For example, I believe the Oxford dictionary gets a few words added to it every year, based on new trends in the language as a result of changes in the culture.  It’s also crazy to think about how different the English language was just 200 years ago.  In the grand scheme of things, 200 years is not that much time.  So it’s awesome to think about how much language will surely change over the next 200 years.

The fact that Japan still uses abacuses, which I learned in the Lupton/Miller reading, is crazy to me.  I think that is such a wonderful juxtaposition of the ancient with the modern, because they are paired with electronic calculators.  I also think it’s fascinating that some numeric systems from certain tribal cultures are based on our hands and feet.

Why are some cultures so much more advanced than others?  This is a question I kept thinking about throughout the Lupton/Miller reading.  And why are some economies so depressed while others are buoyant?

Something I found very interesting about these two readings by Helen Armstrong and Bruno Munari is that they both reflected on objectivity versus subjectivity in graphic design, and how designers have gone back and forth throughout the ages from one to the other and then back again.  I myself am a huge proponent of subjectivity in all forms of design.  This is because I think that so very many things have already been done in the world, and the average consumer has seen so very much already, that I believe the only way to really differentiate oneself as a designer is to put one’s deeply personal point of view or spin on everything one designs.  Plus I think there has been enough rational, plain, objective designs so far in history, and I love the idea of everyone getting very personal with their designs, even if just from the perspective of getting to know other people through their designs.

One part of the Helen Armstrong reading that really stuck out to me, was Kenya Hara’s quote that was paired with the advertisement for Muji that he designed, about how the blankness of the ads is there for the viewer to deposit their own ideas and wishes into.  Some people may absolutely love that blankness, but I think it is so boring (no disrespect to Kenya Hara).  As I stated in the above paragraph, I think there has been so much plainness in design for many years, that I am craving ads and other designs that are hyper personal to the designer and look totally different from each other.

Something in the Bruno Munari reading that I found really interesting was that the roadsigns for double bends in the Louis XIV era were at first quite decorative, as was fitting for the time.  However, as time passed and those roads became more and more used by more people, the roadsigns became less decorative and larger, so that they were more functional to all those people.  I love all that Rococo decoration from that era, and I find it striking that it is widely accepted that less decoration is more practical.  I suppose maybe there is a psychological reasoning for that consensus, however I would love it if highly decorative elements were allowed to be inserted in designed things that are highly functional.  I just feel like, why do highly functional objects like roadsigns need to be bare bones simple, plain, and devoid of any fun elements?