C15 Knowledge of history of design
Initial skills rating *
I recognise work by my favourite designers and artists from history such as William Morris , Gaudi, Charles Renee Mackintosh, Leonardo Da Vinci, Salvador Dali, Friedensreich Hundertwasser ,Louis Comfort Tiffany and I can recognise the style of work from the Art Deco an Art Neuvaux periods. But I can tell you very little about these people.
I have had the privilege to gaze on their works through the media and in museums, dedicated exhibitions and even occasionally in private collections.
There is set of stained glass windows by William Morris in a little church in Ilkley, Yorkshire that I dragged my family to find one holiday. Another holiday my daughters made imprints into Roman relics using plasticine due to a friend of a friend that worked in a university. But I couldn’t date these periods of design. It feels like quite random knowledge.
**
Following Bhav’s tutorials I have some new names to look up and a time-line to help me place my favourite designers in history. I have also begun to understand that what is going on in the world plays a part in influencing design, from wars to recessions. Sometimes designers are trying to say something beyond the function of a design.
I think I will make myself a large time-line on a wall in my bedroom. (Now that doesn’t sound too eccentric does it?) I can place my favourite historical designers and start to find out more about them and what influenced their work.
I have had the privilege to gaze on their works through the media and in museums, dedicated exhibitions and even occasionally in private collections.
There is set of stained glass windows by William Morris in a little church in Ilkley, Yorkshire that I dragged my family to find one holiday. Another holiday my daughters made imprints into Roman relics using plasticine due to a friend of a friend that worked in a university. But I couldn’t date these periods of design. It feels like quite random knowledge.
**
Following Bhav’s tutorials I have some new names to look up and a time-line to help me place my favourite designers in history. I have also begun to understand that what is going on in the world plays a part in influencing design, from wars to recessions. Sometimes designers are trying to say something beyond the function of a design.
I think I will make myself a large time-line on a wall in my bedroom. (Now that doesn’t sound too eccentric does it?) I can place my favourite historical designers and start to find out more about them and what influenced their work.
Louis Comfort Tiffany
I created a Louis Comfort Tiffany Prezi. I really struggled to use the Prezi program. My progress was slow. One of my group helped me out by linking the images
I used Styrofoam just before starting this course to make a life size bicycle helmet. Time was limited and the replica was not completed. Reflecting on how my presentation on Louis Comfort Tiffany had gone, I realised that even though I had not completed the helmet as had been the original desire, not one student had realised. It served just as well to show the students how to turn the basic form into a shaped helmet. When I refer to my presentation on Louis Comfort Tiffany, I had not wanted to do it because I had not completed my presentation to the level I had desired. Bhav encouraged me to work with what I had done.The feedback I received was good. It had not been obvious that I was giving an incomplete presentation. Nobody else would have known there were pictures missing. I guess they saw it as it was and not what how I had wanted it to be. I was shocked and delighted by the enthusiastic response by my classmates when Bhav suggested I give them a tutorial in making stained glass.
Timelines ***
5th March 2012
Tonight I thought it would be a good idea to catch up on some of the things I have learnt with regard to the History of design. I wanted to start with some of the printed time-lines I have seen, one from the Tate dating significant art styles over the last century and one I borrowed from my tutor.
Produced by Practical action
www.practicalaction.org/education/smallischallenge
I wanted to keep a copy just because it was the first time-line I had seen that contained inventions rather than art movements. It is not that I do not recognise that art styles have an influence on design especially art movements or the works of people like Gaudi but this time-line was a record more of technology and inventions. Having seen these and the history of the vacuum cleaner combined with websites full of information on the inventions that appeared due to the space program I started to think just how easy it would be to construct my own time-lines.
I went in search of software to help me and downloaded a free seven day trial from SmartDraw. Within minutes I was drawing my time-line, experimenting with bubble formats, dates, coloured backgrounds. Having added all the words and bubbles I started to investigate the other icons. There were those that would allow you to import photos and put in hyper-links. Use colour schemes, alter spacing, adding special effects, change lines and text styles. All in all most icons looked like things I have used in other programs. I am not saying there were not things that were new to me but there was an awful lot that I recognised. It was the things that were more specific to this program that I did not know how to use but with experimentation I am sure if I had needed I could have got to grips with.
The most unfortunate thing about using this program is that I am unlikely to be able to access the full time-line when this trial expires as I will not have the correct software to open it. I tried saving as a JPEG image but all that does is gives me a screen-shot with a trial logo on one side. I am glad I tried to use the software because now I know there is software out there for making Gantt charts and tables etc and it really was very easy to use now that I have better computing skills than I had six months ago.
Tomorrow I will take some screen shots of my time-line and alter its appearance
Tonight I thought it would be a good idea to catch up on some of the things I have learnt with regard to the History of design. I wanted to start with some of the printed time-lines I have seen, one from the Tate dating significant art styles over the last century and one I borrowed from my tutor.
Produced by Practical action
www.practicalaction.org/education/smallischallenge
I wanted to keep a copy just because it was the first time-line I had seen that contained inventions rather than art movements. It is not that I do not recognise that art styles have an influence on design especially art movements or the works of people like Gaudi but this time-line was a record more of technology and inventions. Having seen these and the history of the vacuum cleaner combined with websites full of information on the inventions that appeared due to the space program I started to think just how easy it would be to construct my own time-lines.
I went in search of software to help me and downloaded a free seven day trial from SmartDraw. Within minutes I was drawing my time-line, experimenting with bubble formats, dates, coloured backgrounds. Having added all the words and bubbles I started to investigate the other icons. There were those that would allow you to import photos and put in hyper-links. Use colour schemes, alter spacing, adding special effects, change lines and text styles. All in all most icons looked like things I have used in other programs. I am not saying there were not things that were new to me but there was an awful lot that I recognised. It was the things that were more specific to this program that I did not know how to use but with experimentation I am sure if I had needed I could have got to grips with.
The most unfortunate thing about using this program is that I am unlikely to be able to access the full time-line when this trial expires as I will not have the correct software to open it. I tried saving as a JPEG image but all that does is gives me a screen-shot with a trial logo on one side. I am glad I tried to use the software because now I know there is software out there for making Gantt charts and tables etc and it really was very easy to use now that I have better computing skills than I had six months ago.
Tomorrow I will take some screen shots of my time-line and alter its appearance
History of the Vacuum cleaner
I worked as a part of a group looking at the history of the vacuum cleaner. We divided the period of time from the first vacuum cleaners through to innovative designs still being developed today. By dividing the research we gathered a mass of information, four times more then we could have done on our own. It was very interesting and a very successful way of researching a product. I would definitely work this way again in the future.
The group found some interesting YouTube footage
The group found some interesting YouTube footage
Space race ****
I had never before realised the impact of the 1960s/1970s space technology. I know for me at the time it was as important as the computer is to today's generation But I did not know why. I thought of the moon landings as a very exciting event that I watched in black and white on the television. It was as if that was the only thing anyone ever talked about.
Little did I realise the space race was influencing designers at the time. we even had one of these orange fibreglass and teak lamps(everything seemed to be orange at the time!). The shape was based on the space rocket. I didn't realise that I just thought it was a bit ugly. I didn't like orange much.
I knew in my head after the space race the world started to develop technology wise as a rapid rate. I remember my brothers first calculator that cost a weeks wages of £26 replacing his scale rule. I had never realised before that the technology I saw arriving in a our home was a spin off of the technology developed by NASAs space program.
Little did I know that cordless power tools, although in existence, were developed so that the astronauts could drill rock samples on the moon. The laptop is a spin-off from the robust portable computers developed to go on the space rocket
I knew in my head after the space race the world started to develop technology wise as a rapid rate. I remember my brothers first calculator that cost a weeks wages of £26 replacing his scale rule. I had never realised before that the technology I saw arriving in a our home was a spin off of the technology developed by NASAs space program.
Little did I know that cordless power tools, although in existence, were developed so that the astronauts could drill rock samples on the moon. The laptop is a spin-off from the robust portable computers developed to go on the space rocket
I found the NASA and NASA spinoff websites a source of wonderful information including this timeline.
The transistor
I have just read the transistor was developed in the early 1950s and revolutionised electronics. This revolution led to cheaper products like calculator, radios and computers. Which goes to show that small but major developments in technology can have a great impact on design.