…as I first assumed (years ago).
I am slightly disappointed by the frequency with which I have been writing blog posts recently. It is probably for my benefit more so than for anyone else, because I always feel that essay-writing is an excellent way to learn, and to consolidate what you know. If you can put down in words some new perception or something that you have learned, and structure it in a way that is clear and coherent, then you go a long way in reinforcing your knowledge and benefit from being able to scrutinise it. I consider this to be the closest thing that I do to keeping a diary, as I see that my study of design inevitably shapes my personality; being a designer is not so much a profession that you can step in and out of as a lifestyle that demands that on some level your mind is always at work.
Why I am writing this…
I was very satisfied today to have something affirmed that I have suspected for a while. Eames Demetrious – in his talk The design genius of Charles + Ray Eames – recalled a ‘brutal’ quote of his grandfather (Charles): “The extent to which you have a design style is the extent to which you have not solved the design problem”. At times I have considered whether I have a style; previously, I decided that I did not, and saw this as something that would develop as my designing improved, partly based upon some advice I had been given. Later, after reading Paul Rand, who said not to confuse style with form, I concluded the absence of a style is probably a good thing. In abundance it highlights predetermined thinking and therefore laziness. A good designer bases their original solutions on a solid bed of research.
My recent preoccupation has been the design field in which I could or should specialise. I feel a pressure to choose, but my tendency is to not want to be pigeon-holed, mainly because I feel that design skills are translatable across different mediums. This all-encompassing view of design is one shared by Charles and Ray Eames; at least, this is the impression I gather from Demetrious’ talk. Throughout their career the couple worked with film and animation in parallel with furniture design and architectural projects. Whilst it is a fascinating talk, it is not very well structured and goes at a very fast pace, so I shall have to return to it again. On the theme of design boundaries, I was rather impressed by something drawn to my attention by Barbra Streisand in her recent Jonathan Ross interview, which rather persuaded me that my view of design was a natural one. Streisand loves architecture, the design of buildings inside and out, and has done her own interior design work. She remarked that she would design her own clothes to match the wallpaper and to avoid colour clashes. However, she later discovered that the great architects like Frank Lloyd Wright would design the dresses for the women who lived in their houses so that they would complement their surroundings. As she said herself: “how wonderful”.
Mrs Darwin D. Martin, c.1910 in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who probably also designed the dress.
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