Color and Design. Tutorial

The Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation

Kazan National Research Technological University

G. Lutfullina, E. Valeeva

C O L O R A N D D E S I G N

Tutorial

Kazan

KNRTU Press

2022

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of design is to make both convenient and beautiful things. Designers try to develop a new thing not only to provide a choice for byers but also to influence their choice. Graphic design, styling and exterior decoration are widely used to create products that are successfully sold in the market.

In modern society, design is the most developed area of human artistic activity. Practical application of design is very diverse. All things around us are products designed by people using industrial technology in accordance with the principles of beauty and functionality.

Objects of labor and household items created by designers are closely connected with culture, history and traditions of their contemporary era. They are closely related to the corresponding way of life, certain local ethnic characteristics, and social life.

Design is the subject environment with which people contact every day. Therefore, design constantly affects the people mind and their mood. It becomes the most important source of emotions. It can change the view of the world. Thus, design belongs both to the spheres of material and spiritual values.

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1. DESIGN HISTORY

Design is a term which includes mass and elite design, styling, pop design, single art design, urban public art, architectural design, industrial design, WEB design, graphic design, handicraft design, historical futuristic design, future predictive design, photo design, advertising design, information and software design, research design, text design, etc. Designers are to be experts in all areas of their profession.

The roots of design go back to the beginning of the 19th century, in the era of machine production and labor division. Before the industrial

Historical stages:

1. Handicraft industry (from the beginning of human civilization to the end of the 18th century). It is the forerunner of design.

2. Machine production (from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century).

3. Design (from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day).

Handicraft industry

Handicraft industry is a small-scale production based on manual labor, primitive tools and technologies. Craftsmen were engaged in the production of household things. All human requirements for things were taken into account: utility, functionality, convenience, beauty, economic feasibility. Craftsmen were not considered as designers. They made the same things from the same materials. Things turned out to be individual, exclusive, and expensive. Things were produced in small quantities (as much as one person could make). There were six principles

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of handicraft work: sociological, engineering, ergonomic, aesthetic, economic, ecological.

Machine production

The industrial revolution led to the era of machine production. Designers began to create prototypes of products that other people produced using machines. The practice of design was quite primitive. Engineers were responsible for the functionality and cost-effectiveness of manufactured products, while designers were responsible only for their aesthetic appearance. Designers had to create prototypes of mass machine production, having previously studied the technology of modern production and the material properties. The purpose of the products and the ease of handling them were as much important as their appearance. Soon, design companies were recruiting draftsmen, modellers, engineers, architects, and market experts. In 1785, industrial machine production began to develop in England. This was the era of industrial machines, specialization, narrow professional approaches, division of labor, and flowline production.

The basic principles of design theory were formulated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the architect Henry van de Velde. He emphasized the need to combine the technical and artistic forms of products, while subordinating the aesthetic qualities to the requirements of the expediency and functionality of the thing. In other words, he focused on “practical and reasonable beauty”.

In 1913, the art theorist and architect Walter Gropius told that “a technically remarkable thing must be imbued with a spiritual idea and aesthetically designed.” Later, in 1919, he founded and headed the famous German art school “Bauhaus” (in translation “Building House”) in Weimar, which became the first design school that aimed at combining the efforts of technology and art in industrial production. The curriculum at the school involved the combination of art with construction technology.

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In the period from 1923 to 1932, a professional design model was developed in Russia. At this time, it was one of the most important centers for the design formation. A system of professional training for certified designers was formed at the industrial faculties in Higher State Artistic and Technical Workshops (VKhUTEMAS). The main goal of the system was to organize the subject environment, taking into account the general processes in the spheres of work, life and culture.

During this period, original creative design concepts were formed, which determined its further development. You can learn more about them from the works of A. Rodchenko, L. Lisitsky, V. Tatlin.

The strongest side of Russian design was aesthetics, which can be explained by two fundamental points:

•peculiarities of the Russian design development;

•peculiarities of the Russian state development in the 20th century.

Artists came to oppose construction as the embodiment of the true essence of objects and composition as a form introduced from outside,

stages. Designers worked in industry using various materials and technologies. They were engaged in mass production. Unfortunately, all advantages of industrial production often do not live up to expectations. Stage painters and props only decorated their things while designers had to think about the product from different points of view. They had to imagine in advance how their future creation would behave in its habitat, how it would affect the environment and how the environment would affect the thing. Designers had to give the thing maximum sympathy for the person, for the one for whom the thing would be intended, to whom it would serve.

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Designers aim at preserving the idea purity and idea components: functional validity, material, supergraphics, etc. Finally, designers have to predict the need for the thing they creates.

What should designers know when creating a thing? They should know everyday life, ethnography, demographic situation, sociology of everyday life (to understand who, when, how and for how long will use a thing that is born today), psychology, physiology, medicine, ergonomics, technology of making things, properties of materials, possible engineering and design solutions. Designers know that everything correlates with each other and a person perceives it on a subconscious level.

It was proved that companies which follow the recommendations of designers produce goods of high quality and succeed in business.

Thus, there were two main design development schools:

•Russian school (VKhUTEMAS);

•German school (Bauhaus).

All world design schools use the educational concepts of these schools.

The basic principles of world design education in the 20th century were based on design propaedeutics: elementary introductory courses that taught to see the simple in the complex, to split any form into geometric primary elements, to separate life into functional processes. The modernist paradigm is a system of art education, a school of techniques that can be used to analyze the entire previous culture, redesign the existing one and build a new world - expedient, technological, functional and socially just.

Development trends of modern design

There was no design school today. Even if you really wanted to start over and teach the design principles according to the Russian or German school, this would be impossible now due to the lack of a school.

A new century has come, and the modernist design, which dominated almost the entire 20th century, is being replaced by

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a postmodern one. The cardinal changes that have taken place recently have blown up both the existing structure of professional activity and the system of professional values. For the past twenty years, postmodernism and computers have shaken up the entire design world.

Postmodernism considers a computer not as a simple tool. It is like a printing press in the invention of printing. That is, a tool that actively rebuilds the entire mentality, generates a new language, and essentially opens up a new cultural era.

Changes in design coincide with much more serious and profound changes in the world. The industrial society is being replaced by a postmodern one. The era of the conquest of nature and unbridled faith in external progress is being replaced by an ecological era that switches our consciousness from external factors of development to internal ones. This era should be considered not only within the framework of the collision of modernism and postmodernism, but also more broadly as the collision of New time and Post-New time.

At the Congress of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (Icograda) in Seoul in 2000, a special Manifesto for Design Education was adopted. The Manifesto states the cardinality of the ongoing changes and the lack of adequate educational concepts. It asks us to listen to the intuition of the younger generation, be ready for experiments. Teachers should not go ahead of students, but should go beside with them.

Thus, the role of designers-educators is changing. They should not provide access to knowledge, but inspire young people and facilitate their orientation for more fruitful and creative practice.

LECTURE QUESTIONS

1.What is design?

2.What is the purpose of design?

3.What is handicraft production?

4.What is the role of handicraft production for design development?

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