Author: Ka Sin Cheung (Page 2 of 2)

Language is a bridge that connects people in communications. Language is something verbal, gesture, or written. Languages were unique compared to signs, symbols, and icons. Since you have to know the language that someone speaks or written to you for you to understand what the person is trying to say. Not only that we have to understand the language, we still need to understand the tone, the vocabulary (since words have different meanings) that they are talking to us as well. If we don’t then we will misunderstand. Also, there’s a ton of language in the world, which makes people harder to communicate with. Because of that signs and icons are being developed. To read the sign, you don’t have to understand that specific language, you can read and understand it even you are coming from another country. Since icons and signs are like a pictogram, such as bathroom signs (male or female or unisex), construction signs, a danger sign, and these signs we don’t have to know that specific language. We can read it and understand it with our knowledge.

Signs, signifiers, and the signified are working together to make people understand and communicate better. Signs can replace words, and it’s bigger and easier to read compared to words. People can be notified by signs easily compared to words. Signified are images or graphics that designers create, signifiers are more toward languages like slogans, and when signifiers and signified form together it creates signs like logos. Just like a yellow letter M, we can understand that as McDonald’s.

I would say language historically meant a lot. People are going toward languages more in the old day. However, in today’s society, we still work with language like slogans a lot in advertising. We work with posts on social media, we still use language to communicate with people. But we are starting to have it less and less. Just taking McDonald’s as an example again, “I’m lovin’ it”, the slogan that you can read or understand it as McDonald’s. But the time of saying I’m lovin’ it has become lessor. People tend to read the logo or the graphic first other than “I’m lovin’ it”. So it turns out people read graphics faster compare to words and in graphics the simpler the better.

In Design as Art by Bruno Munari, the role of design in society is something that can light up our life. Maybe a dress that’s fashionable, an attractive vase, or a chair that fits the style of your room. What I said above is all done by designers. The role of a designer is to make aesthetics set on products, at the same time maintaining the functions. And maintaining the function is the first thing that designers should be concerned about. From what I remembered in Art History classes and what Munari wrote, maintaining the function is one of the revolutions in design. It happened in the early 1900s in Weimar. At that time aesthetics was the first thing to think of in products. It causes many product malfunctions, and people can’t afford to buy the products since the products are expensive after the design. Things such as a teacup without the bottom, a chair that you can’t sit on, engraving decorative design on normal plates. So people decided to change the mindset of design. What they did was educate designers and design students to set function as the first thing to think of rather than aesthetic. If the product malfunction after aesthetics set on it, then the design has some problems. And it would be considered as a bad design.  

The role of technology changed design in many ways. Without having applications like photoshops, InDesign and lightroom design are done slowly. The way of performing design changed as well. For example, most design pieces are something that you can touch and feel with. However, with technology most things are data. A poster would be something on a screen and not on paper. Photographs are digital not on photographic paper. But because it’s on the computer it’s easier to publish your ideas, it costs less than it used to be, more ways to spread your ideas and influence more people.

I think the problem designers face today is that we don’t know what will change in design. Like what was indicated in Graphic Design Theory,  Helvetica was exposed to everybody in the 19th century, and it turns out to be one of the famous typefaces in the 20th century and most designers are using it. The second problem that I think of is designers don’t know when their design is being out of style. According to Bruno Munari, designs in old days are more toward signs and sculpture. Like what he described of blacksmith’s sign, and the range of color people use in the old days. And when the generation changes, people don’t understand what they mean, and they will not get excited or aware of it when they see it.

The role of technology changed design in many ways. Without having applications like photoshops, InDesign and lightroom design are done slowly. The way of performing design changed as well. For example, most design pieces are something that you can touch and feel with. However, with technology most things are data. A poster would be something on a screen and not on paper. Photographs are digital not on photographic paper. But because it’s on the computer it’s easier to publish your ideas, it costs less than it used to be, more ways to spread your ideas and influence more people.

I think the problem designers face today is that we don’t know what will change in design. Like what was indicated in Graphic Design Theory,  Helvetica was exposed to everybody in the 19th century, and it turns out to be one of the famous typefaces in the 20th century and most designers are using it. The second problem that I think of is designers don’t know when their design is being out of style. According to Bruno Munari, designs in old days are more toward signs and colors. Like what he described of blacksmith’s sign, and the range of color people use in the old days. And when the generation changes, people don’t understand what they mean, and they will not get excited or aware of it when they see it.

-Kasin Cheung

Link below is my video intro

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ITF0UM8oSCKNl87KuP7Dbc14OlvshPD/view?usp=drivesdk