- Greetings everyone.
In today's talk, we will discuss
the notion of beauty in design.
I believe design has three primary goals:
beauty, utility and sustainability
to make the world a more beautiful place,
to make it more utilitarian,
and to make it more sustainable.
(bright music)
Today, we'll focus on the concept of beauty.
Very often, design is equated with the notion of style
and the process of designing is often referred
to as the process of styling.
That's not quite true.
Though design does get actively involved in style
in creating beauty, in creating aesthetics,
that's not the only thing that it does.
We all have ideas of improving the world by design.
We think of design as problem-solving;
however, style and styling
are certainly components of design,
and that is what relates to the notion of beauty
or the process of creating beautiful things.
One of the things design wants to do
and should do is to fill up the world
with beautiful interior spaces, like you see in this church,
or to have products that are really beautiful to use,
such as these wooden bowls and spoons,
or have beautiful packaging
that gives a sense of the drink
that is inside the container,
or to create beautiful landscapes by landscape design,
which create serene, beautiful environments
for people to spend time in.
So this is one of the key goals of design.
The goal is to create aesthetic experiences.
Now, what is aesthetics?
Aesthetics essentially is it's a branch of philosophy,
which is the study of beauty.
What is an experience?
An experience is something
that we go through as individuals.
And so an aesthetic experience is essentially something
that we would go through as human beings
that makes everything pleasurable for us as humans.
And this applies to all of our senses.
We have five senses.
And an aesthetic experience is something
that is beautiful to look at, something that sounds good,
something that's good to touch, to taste.
So all of these together create an aesthetic experience.
So when designers focus on developing products,
they have to keep in mind
that they think of all these five senses
as a part of the aesthetic experience.
Take the example of a car.
Driving a car means that you need to have comfort.
Comfort is a form of pleasure.
So a seat that is comfortable,
a seat that is the right shape, form, color,
texture, materials,
the contours that make it comfortable,
but it also has a steering wheel that's easy to hold
but also gives a pleasurable feeling.
We also have to think of things like public transportation.
Public transportation should be just
as beautifully designed,
just as pleasurable as an experience
as would be private personal transportation as well.
Or experiences of leisure.
If you go into a movie theater,
if you go into a theater to watch a play,
that should also give you an aesthetic experience.
The environment design, the seating design,
the graphics, the lighting.
All that should be such that you leave
with an aesthetic experience.
And that is one of the primary goals of design.
So one of the things that designers do is engage
in something called "form development."
What does that really mean?
If you think of a potter,
just as a potter creates products from clay,
just as a potter, as he works or she works
with this lump of clay and converts that lump of clay
into a pot, into an artifact,
you see the form developing over time.
You see the form developing underneath the fingers
of this craftsperson.
Similarly, designers, whether you're designing
a new building or an interior space or a piece of graphics
or fashion or interaction with a digital device
or a product, in all those cases,
you are doing form development.
You're essentially giving visual, tactile form
to something that is initially an idea.
And that is form development.
Designers give form to ideas,
so that they become tangible aesthetic experiences
for people.
It's one of the primary tasks of what design does.
And how do designers do that?
Very often designers create something called
a "design language."
This is very typical in the industrial design world.
It's very typically for products.
What is a design language?
Very often, if you look at certain companies,
you can recognize the products that they do.
You can tell that this product comes from this company.
In some cases, it could be specific designers.
If you look at fashion design, for example,
you can look at a certain amount of clothing
and you can say that,
"OK, this clothing was designed
by this specific designer."
And that is because they have developed a unique language
which is expressed in terms of the shape, form,
color, texture, materials, details, etc.
So design language essentially is something visual
that identifies the work as belonging
to that specific company or the specific designer.
Let's look at an example of a design language.
I had some students working on a project,
and one of the students was really inspired
by this notion of the jellyfish.
The jellyfish has a certain amount of neon,
a certain amount of glowing quality to them.
The student was also inspired by glowing objects.
These neon lighting.
And so he came up with a new design language
that he referred to as luminescent futurism, right?
And so what this did is it allowed him
to create a certain visual language,
which included things like lines,
which included things like neon colors.
Included certain things like the interplay
between phosphorescence or fluorescence and dark areas.
And so that gave him a process,
a direction by which he could design the products
that he was working on.
So what you see here in this case is an example
of a product that was designed keeping
in mind this notion of luminescent futurism.
So what you see here is you see, essentially,
a dark product, a black product,
and you see these lines,
these bright lines, white and blue lines running
through the product that essentially glow
when the product is turned on.
And so what you see here is an application
of a specific design language
that is inspired by jellyfish
and by products that use neon.
So what this does is this gives designers,
one, a direction in which to create their products
and the buildings or the graphics, etc.,
it gives them a unique aesthetic direction,
and it helps differentiate products.
So the product that uses this form of a design language
is different from something else
that might be on the market that does the same thing,
but this looks different, right?
So it's a good way of differentiating products
in the marketplace.
As an example of an existing company
that does this really well,
we look at Bang & Olufsen.
Bang & Olufsen is a company
that makes a series of products,
including a whole range of communication devices,
stereo system, CD players, etc.
In this case, you see the example of a phone.
It was designed by Bang & Olufsen.
You can see that there's a very specific design language.
It's very geometric, it's very sharp,
it's very clean.
Very often, on Bang & Olufsen products
you don't see any text.
You don't see anything
that identifies specific buttons
or specific spaces of the product.
The way they design their products is they want
to make sure that the design itself,
the shape, the form, the color, the textures,
the materials, express what the product does.
And therefore, they try to minimize graphics
and they try to make it extremely clean,
simple, and elegant in terms of the design.
So you can see that in this case,
you can see in this case,
examples of monitors or television sets.
In all of them you can see
that there's a very clean line design language
on the product that is translated
into all of their variations of that specific product.
Let's take an example of a product
that is designed by a company called Numark
that does a whole range of equipment for DJs.
And what you see here in this case
is the Numark turntable called TTX
that was a part of a series of products
that the company did.
And let's talk about how the shape
and the form and the texture and the overall aesthetics
or the beauty of this product was developed
by the designers.
One of the first things
that Numark did was they engaged with DJs.
Now, if this is a turntable that is going to be used by DJs,
it's important that we get their input,
we get their feedback, we get a list of needs from them.
What exactly are you looking for?
If we are creating a brand-new product for you,
if we are creating a new turntable that you can use,
what would you like to see in it?
So some of the things that came up in these interviews
with the designers was that you would like this
to be eye-catching and cool looking,
but not necessarily flashy.
So this was a specific requirement
that came up in interviews that were done by Numark.
And it said that we need to push the envelope
on creating an interesting new look for this product.
It has to have a certain unique aesthetic.
It has to be cool.
Has to be something that catches attention,
but should not look too flashy.
And that's an interesting direction for the designers
to run ahead with because they know
that they can take some liberties,
they can try some interesting new things,
but they have to keep it in check.
It can't be overboard. You can't go too crazy with it.
One other thing that the designers did
in terms of figuring out how to develop a design language
and how to develop an aesthetic
or how to make this product beautiful is
to look at the environment, the context.
Where is this product used?
So as you know, DJs work in clubs.
And so what you see in this case is an image board,
often referred to also as a mood board
that designers create.
And this mood board includes images
of what actually you'd see in a club on the dance floor
in the environment in which these DJs work.
Bringing this into the design of the product would
then look like it fits.
It belongs into the context for which it was designed.
One other thing they are also looked at is looked
at fashion and lifestyle.
What is the kind of fashion that DJs like?
What is their lifestyle?
And they put together this collage
that created some sense of a visual direction
that the product could go into.
So for example, they like certain kinds of shoes,
certain kinds of T-shirts, certain brands,
certain cartoon characters,
certain activities like skateboarding.
And so these gave the designers some sense
of the fashion preferences
and the lifestyle preferences of the DJ's
that helped in the design of the turntable as well.
Then they came up with a set of attributes.
What should this product have?
Well, it should express a certain amount of quality,
it should be something that DJs can trust,
it should be something that is reliable,
but also expresses reliability through its design.
Again, should be robust,
but also expresses robustness through its design,
should function really well, should be warm,
should be something that they feel comfortable using,
and should be durable.
Something that lasts a long time,
something that can be transported from place to place.
And so these are some of the attributes,
the design attributes that came up
in the interviews with DJs,
that they realized that we need to make sure
that the product we're designing incorporates
all these values, all these ideas into the design.
It should actually be functional, but also look functional.
It should be reliable, but it should look reliable.
It should be durable and it should look
like it is a durable product.
And that's really important for designers to do.
Functionally, it has to do all these things,
and visually it has to express that it does these things.
They did one other thing.
They looked at these words like "quality,"
like "durable," like "functional,"
and they created another mood board,
another image board that looked
at what are the existing products that do this?
Can we look at specific products that look reliable,
that look clean, that look purposeful, etc.?
And they created this mood board to see,
can we draw from existing products
that express these specific terms
and can we use that into the design process?
The next step for designers,
once they know what attributes have to be incorporated
and what the language is like, what forms, colors,
textures to use, they start drawing.
What you see in this case,
is these are some sketches that are done
by the designers at Numark.
You see top views and side views
and angular views of the turntable.
You see specific features built into the product.
Whole range of other sketches.
Again, top views of the turntable
that show different shapes for the tonearm,
that show different bumpers on the edges of the product,
and also you see some more designs
of the tonearm hinge mechanism as well.
So this process continues.
They come up with a series of designs for the turntable,
for the tonearm.
And the next step is then going into some CAD versions.
So what you see here,
these are variations of the final designs.
And what you see here in this case is virtual models done
on the computer of some of the finalized designs
of the turntable.
So you can see there's a variation
in terms of the overall shape, the contours on the product,
the shape of the tonearm,
the location and design of the buttons themselves.
So all of those details get figured out
in these CAD models of the product.
Then once a final design is selected,
as more details that are put into on CAD.
So what you see here is, again,
a virtual model of the final turntable.
And then finally, the actual design.
This is the final product in its final version
as something the DJs would buy on the market.
So what we've seen in this case study is a series
of steps that the designers followed
in creating this product,
but also what were the inspirations for the shape,
the form, the color, the aesthetics of the product.
What gave it this form of beauty?
What made it beautiful for DJs?
And so you're seeing that process unfold through Numark.
So what we have learned today
is we've talked about the process of beauty in design,
what beauty means,
how it is incorporated into the design process,
and how designers will take an idea,
and by using such things as form,
color, texture, materials, and details,
try to make the world a much more beautiful place,
allowing all people to have aesthetic experiences
in their everyday life.
Thank you.