Designblog

Organic form, double-sided symmetrical, built by thread, and spheres of different sizes.

It is an open structure, because of the flexibility of the thread the object is deformable but the structure remains the same.

Handmade Chinese decoration for your mobile phone ore key ring, i like that it is handmade.

What i don’t like about the object has nothing to do with the shape, only that it has no function, only decoration, useless for me.

What i find interesting is how the excisting shape is build and has a structure that can grow or deform.

What wanted for my design is that it must have a function, that the shape has also a structure that can grow or deform,

After having seen Edward Burtynsky’s “Manufactured Landscapes” which contain some pieces about abandoned products, it inspired me to juse trash as material and make a trashcan, i went for two days around the city looking for trash.

Part I

The object in which I’ve stumble upon, has no more than refined curves. The sensuality that carries its shape generates pleasure to the eyes. It invites you to caress its smooth curves and smell every inch of its pronounced surface. Once you’ve done it you will not want to be without it.

Part II

After having looked at the different characteristics which I found interesting in my previous object, I’ve decided that I will be translating these into a chair.

It’s simple, smooth and distinguished contour seems to be a match to the outline of the human body, as if it was the missing piece need to complete a big jigsaw puzzle where the body was the main feature. Such complementary piece seems to be a perfect fit for the curves that characterise the human body. Extrapolating this figure to a seating device for the human being seems a natural step as it adopts the forms of the human body providing an anatomical chair, which provides natural and resting support to the body.

I like boxes. Small boxes, big boxes, secret boxes. The fact that I can put something inside, hide it, and get it out again is magical to me.

This particular box is my favourite. It is a small tin one made in 1980 to keep your cigarettes from crushing.

I like the worn out look, faded gold paint and the scratches. The old and nostalgic look and feel of the little box. The very simple shape, a flat container part and a lid, all made out of one material. The only part that is not made out of tin is the pin that connects the lid to the box.

That connection part is simply some bent tin and that little metal pin. And it works really well, for 30 years already. I also really like the curled edges of the lid, that make it seem fragile, but actually make the box more practical.

The way the tin is bent to get the square shape reminds me of the bending of an enveloppe, or a sheet of paper. I think it’s nice that such a solid and sustainable, decorative and unnecessary little object has such a humble and straightforward feel and look to it.

From these points of liking I decided to make a suitcase, with a similar simple feel to it – exists out of one part (except the handle) – deals with the way an enveloppe is bent or folded – is clearly a suitcase – and doesn’t look so very new

I designed a suitcase with the size and the handle of a traditional attaché case as we all know. To the opening and closing of the suitcase  I applied the aspect of the bending of an enveloppe which I like about the Sonny Boy box.

Because of  the bending-instead-of-lifting opening system the suitcase could be made out of one part, and in order to open the suitcase you unfold it.

Form did not follow function.

This exercise device that is designed to keep your waist in fantastic condition is visually something that could be an illustration or of decorative means in its most minimal way by being almost two-dimensional.

Its rounded corners on the edges and the repetitive voluminous circular lines add a wavy aspect to the object and give it air and continuity.

Taking the two above mentioned aspects and consequently use these principles as a departure point, designing headgear seemed utterly natural. The sort of headgear that would follow the shape and size of the head, but eventually alter its original state.

Shapes contain shapes.

This pipe is a monument.

The company designed the pipe to be feminine. An infinite triangle, with an elitist and delicate exterior shape, but at the same time graphic and geometric. Frail but strong.

A woman.

The pipe contains more shapes in the shape. Pipoo 8 has three shapes. The lower dark trapezium made of briar, the transparent upper part made of acrylic and a black plastic cylinder.

We can admire her. How two different materials become unified shapes that contain inside the black cylinder, making a unity of one strict object. There is no possibility to change it, I must accept how it is.

About 15 cm long, it can become part of your body but you can also compare it to a Bic, looking like something alien.

It’s gorgeous.

This is not a vase. It is Carnival.

The vase contains more shapes in a shape. It has three shapes. A wooden rectangular with sharp edges leaning 8 degrees towards the right. A fluorescent green rectangular with rounded corners made out of cardboard, whereas its centre has a phallic transparent glass.

Mike Kelley once said: “With my work I not only want to reach the most educated viewer, but the most lazy viewer as well”.

About 44 centimeters high. Screaming for attention. One cannot avoid the sight of this illuminating green situation.

It’s a glossy disaster.

I chose a bike. A bike which colours I find hideous, leaving me no option but to rely on shape alone.

Trying to get something out of it I tried to draw the bike over and over again, varying sizes or distance between the individual elements that construct the whole. Then I did a gestural drawing of the bike.

My eyes constructed the shape in front of me, following the bike around it’s wheel, to the seat, which pointed ahead at the handlebars, which steered me, because of the slant of the bars, back to the wheel and the cycle continues. They don’t flow into one another; the elements point, circle and swing constantly towards each other.

The design literally becomes “eye-catching” not allowing me to escape; I have to analyse the object. Even an attempt at escape is  useless as I would only slip back into the shape because of its properties.

An intriguing notion, an object that makes one look, if even for a second longer.
This principle I tried to follow, to arrive at a functional design, but before I completed it, something different happened.

I became intrigued by shape.

The object wasn’t eye-catching, it became different.

It showed so many possibilites, so many open doors that were immediately closed before a new one was opened.

I tried following the same idea, but in this case, I wasn’t intrigued by how the shapes were relating to one another. It offered something new; instead of the shape immediately telling me of an object, this one was like a puzzle. Or like kaleidoscope. Or even like a mirror.

I projected on it. It was telling me stories.

Shape as language- If shape has its own language then what does it communicate?

By zooming into the details of my Shu Uemura’s Eyelash Curler I discovered that the flow of the object is both practical as aesthetic. For example the flow of wire suggests that the least material was used making it a practical decision. However the screws with its specific smooth curved heads also reinforce the flow of the object making it not merely a practical choice.

Analyzing the flow of the object and sketching its shapes from different angles lead mine pen to the final shape of a shopping cart. I tried to apply the elegant design qualities of the eyelash curler into this new shopping cart by creating a flow with the least material.

It was interesting to use shape as a tool. In this manner the concept behind the shopping cart follows the shape and qualities of the eyelash curler. Furthermore by putting the object in its environment the concept behind it begins to speak for itself. In other words what you see is what you get.

At the end what does the shape of this shopping cart communicate? I would say consume less because the basket is twice as small as a regular supermarket shopping cart. Also the shape of the handle makes it not possible to lean on. Thus people will unlikely stroll in the supermarket and get less seduced by products that are not on their list. In this way consumers rather use the supermarket instead of the other way around!

Sound.

Heads turn.

What arrives?

What passes by?

Research.

Male tango shoes.

Makes sense.

Quite feminine, though.

Androgynous.

Turkish shoemaker fixed them.

20 euro’s.

Cheap.

“Beautiful, around thirty years old.”

Leather, black, a hint of wood.

Ten little holes.

Thin black laces.

Simplicity.

Simplicity.

Starting point.

Sound transformed into visuals.

Black.

Second hand leather.

Ten small holes.

Covering skin.

New necklace.

New scarf.

The Casio F-91w is a watch that intrigued me in the first place because of his simple structure. It’s not heavy, easy to wear and no unnecessary elements. The watch explains itself. With this I mean that the shape shows the function, which is something many designers don’t do anymore these days. Other aspects that I like are the geometric shapes, colours and the simplicity of the sound and buttons.

The longer you look at the watch, the more you will find out that the square with cut edges is repeated many times in different ways like a form stretched to the edges at the end of the watch. The designer did not only repeat this square, he also repeated other elements like lines and typography.

Since this watch turned out for me to be mainly about repetition. I chose to use this aspect in my next design, which turned out to be a bridge for bycicles.

In the technical drawing you can see more clearly how I repeated the geometric forms as much as possible. For the bridge I also chose to use the form of the bracelet from thick to thin into the pilars of the upper-middle side of the bridge.

The object I brought has a function of a noserinser. For most people it strikes as a sexual object due to it’s shapes. I think this is interesting.

It is egg shaped and there is a fallic shape growing out of it. It’s made out of ceramics and has a nice glaze. The colour is white with some small imperfections in the glazing. Even though it’s hollow it has a certain weight to it. It looks simple, but it has some interesting details such as the rounded endings and the transition from one shape to another. Another practical detail is the measuring line up to where you fill it with water. It is just a seam but it’s not carved in, it must have been made directly on the throwing table.

The object attracts to touch, and looks easy to grab. I also think it refers to some kind of artifact, it could maybe be a water can, wine carafe, tea pot or something completely else. I find it interesting in it’s simplicity.

From the start there were a lot of ideas of what to make of the shapes. Finally I decided to make a table. The size of the original table would be 90cm x 90cm x 50cm, this would be a good size for a table in the hall. Preferably it would be made of ceramics.

I kept some of the shapes I liked or was interested in from the original noserinser, such as the endings and transitions from one shape to another. The measuring line was also an important element which I kept and presented at the top of the fallic shaped legs.

Multiplicity of forms and emptiness (pure form) always gives me the same feeling of infinity.
Somehow I would like to say that 0 = ?.
The choice between horror vacui and amor vacui seems to be a rhetoric question. Is there any difference between a clump of grass and a smooth white stone?

Everything around us is organized in some kind of rhythmic replication. Lives on a three, hairs, names and numbers in the telephone book. Each of the chemical elements is a pattern integrity. Each individual is a pattern integrity.
Replications and emptiness seem to have the same quality to me.
But what is more natural (neutral) for human beings?
Probably emptiness.

Many people believes that simple-form, cheap mass products can make the working class happy. Designers and craftsman tried to realize that dream. One of them was nineteenth-century wallpaper designer, painter, poet and writer William Morris. But what has he to do with the hero of ours essays El Lissitytzky?
I discover a lot of links… They both believe that art is a way to change human reality. They want to change society and they were both left wing oriented.

Now we know, their ideals failed. William Morris was not radical enough and El Lissitzky was too much. First of all, they didn’t think about the economical aspect of design and basic human needs. Secondly they didn’t take into consideration that avant-garde design can be too hermetic for most members of the society.

I appreciate the work of the russian costructivist, but I can not realy imagine that I would try to do something so simple and uncompromising like they did. If I would combine architectonical clearness of Lissitzky with birds, flowers and colors I could find some new solution for common people?
For me, patterns are the essence of beauty. Maybe the next revolution should be a revolution of patterns. Although ideals never come true they can stay forever – good design.

What fascinated me in the exposition is how El Lissitzky redesigned Malevich’s opera, Victory over the Sun.

Victory over the Sun was a futurist opera premiered in 1913. The costume and set design was done by the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich. The futurist opera couldn’t succeed as the suprematist techniques were pretty new. The audience reacted negatively and violently to the performance.

What happened afterwards is that following the Russian revolution, El Lissitzky worked with Malevitch for a new version of the opera as an electro-mechanical show. Lissitzky transformed Malevich’s black and red squares into figures constructed of transparent prisms and metallic rods, bending and receding in space. He created a typography specially for the libretto. Most importantly, he transformed the old costumes into new robotic figurines/figures.

The new version of Victory over the Sun was closer to El Lissitzky’s Proun principles, where his work was more focused on the interaction of his architectural, graphic and typographic experiments, transforming sounds to architecture, words to costumes, or drawings to characters. This made me realize that he is not only a painter, but a graphic artist and an architectural designer, and a designer of furniture’s, books and posters.

This is the proof that architecture and design are not just about constructing buildings or visuals, but also about how to create a coherent whole with a story, connecting different elements like the space, decors, visuals or texts.

Then maybe design is an activity one can apply to any kind of system. Architecture is a principle for making relational systems that can improve the totality of an artwork.

[cover] "Two Squares" / Dedication page / [page.4], from Lissitzky's "Two Squares"

Dit verhaal (1920) behoort tot de proun-serie van lissitzky.
Ik vind het een van zijn beste werken. Simpel en toch heel sterk.
In eerste instantie wist ik helemaal niet dat dit een kaft van een boek was. Een kinderboek nog wel. Over een rood en een zwart vierkant die de wereld gaan redden met behulp van een cirkel. Ze bundelen hun krachten samen om zo de chaos te vernietigen en een nieuwe orde te vestigen.

[page.4] Don’t read, get paper, rods, blocks, set them out, paint them, build.

De tekst op pagina 4 maakt duidelijk dat Lissitzky met zijn verhaal kinderen en volwassenen lezers aanspoorde tot activiteit. Zijn intentie was het verhaal tot leven te laten komen in een schouwspel. Je zou het dan ook niet alleen op een (typo)grafisch twee dimensionele kunnen zien, maar ook op een architecturale drie dimensionele manier kunnen bekijken.

[page.5] Here are the two squares / [page.6] They fly on to the Earth from far away and / [page.7] And see a black storm.

[page.8] Crash – and everything flies apart / [page.9] And on the black was established Red Clearly / [page.10] This is the end – let’s go on.

‘The words move within the fields of force of the figures as they act: these are squares’, zoals hij zelf zegt. De plaatsing van de woorden en het gebruik van de letters vertegenwoordigde een totaal nieuwe benadering. Het verhaal wordt dan ook over het algemeen aanvaard als een van de eerste voorbeelden van de Nieuwe Typografie.

Het werk werd voor het eerst gepubliceerd in 1922 en bestaat uit 10 pagina’s. Lissitzky maakte zelfs een speciale editie voor ons beroemde vaderlandse tijdschrift De Stijl ( in “De Stijl” 5e Jaargang 10/11). Enkele uitgaven hiervan zijn nog op te vragen bij het magazijn van de openbare bibliotheek (De Stijl : [maandblad voor de beeldende vakken], maar de editie waar ik het over heb is daar helaas niet meer in de collectie. Wel de volledige facsimile herdruk met het gehele in het Nederlands vertaalde “van tWee kWAdrAten in 6 konstrukties” in deel II. Ook kun je de volledige originele versie nog vinden in het boek “El Lissitzky”, wat door zijn vrouw Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers is geschreven.

De Stijl facsimile (red. Theo van Doesburg ; ed. by Ad Petersen1968) [page 5,6,7,8,9, 10+page 4]
El Lissitzky by Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers [top 3 pages, original print 22 x 28 cm]

Rodchenko is een constructivist, behoort tot de Russische avant garde. Zij hebben ontzag voor machines en architectuur.
Rodchenko begon zijn carrière als kunstenaar met abstracte schilderijen, daarna ontwikkelde zich dit tot grafische vormgeving en vervolgens fotografie. Door dat hij dit allemaal gedaan heb zie je zijn kennis en talent. Deze bijzondere veranderingen in zijn vakgebied zijn te verklaren aan de hand van zijn werk. Zo is er in zijn constructivistische schilderijen als in zijn grafische collages en fotografie een duidelijk oog voor ruimte en communicatie tussen vlak en lijn zichtbaar.

Door dat hij dit allemaal gedaan heeft zie je zijn kennis en talent. Dankzij zijn veelzijdigheid en het feit dat hij zowel autonoom en vrij toegepast kan werken. En bovendien gebruikt hij zijn talent.
Rodchenko heeft fantasie en een persoonlijk fotografisch oog. In de tentoonstelling in het foam komt dat vooral naar buiten bij de atletiek serie. Door de hoeken die hij kiest word het een beetje surrealistisch en tegelijkertijd is het een prachtig momentopname. Je begrijpt misschien wat ik bedoel als je de foto hier boven ziet. Kale Russische mannen op gymschoenen met heel korte broekjes, en een geweer.
Als hij dit recht van voor had gefotografeerd, werd dit veel serieuzer genomen.
Hij is in dienst van de Sovjet Unie, maar toch heeft hij nog steeds oog voor de absurde taferelen. Hij verpakt deze absurditeit in een voor de Sovjet Unie acceptabele vorm.
Rodchenko heeft fantasie en gevoel voor compositie.

Wat ik echt heel fijn vind aan de voorstelling is, is dat je het plezier in zijn werk kan terug zien. Iets wat ik trouwens miste bij van Doesburg in Leiden en Lissitsky in Eindhoven.

Omdat ik vorig jaar fotografie heb gestudeerd weet ik dat er een soort regels in de fotografie zijn, waar je rekening mee moet houden. Rodchenko heeft dat niet gedaan. Ik vind dat erg fijn, want dat zorgt voor meer vrijheid en meer mogelijkheden.
Mensen hun voeten zijn van de foto afgesneden en sommige gebouwen worden uit hoeken gefotografeerd als of iemand de foto heeft gemaakt die net een beetje bezig is met de fotografie en is wat anders wil doen, zogenaamd iets orgineels wilt proberen.
Ik heb opgezocht dat hij de gebouwen zo fotografeert, omdat hij ze wilt laten zien van alle kanten, op een meer ruimtelijke manier.
Toch hoop ik dat hij de voeten er onderbewust er af heeft gelaten. Want dat betekend dat er minder denken aan te pas is gekomen, het is dan natuurlijker het komt uit het gevoel en het gaat dan meer op de actie zelf.
Dan moet ik gelijk aan zijn collages denken, ze zijn soms heel simpel, maar ze werken heel goed op de een of andere manier.

Ik merkte aan zijn foto’s ook maar weer hoe belangrijk het wel niet is om je eigen foto’s af te drukken. Het contrast of de lichtheid, maakt soms echt zijn foto. Zonder dat waren ze misschien wel te normaal geweest.

In this work you see influences of Design, Fine arts, Architecture and Graphic design.
A nice thing of this work is that the upper drawing can stand on his own, and therefore can be divided in Fine arts. What Lissitzky is doing in the painted photo below, can be compared with design. Almost all his work contains influences of Design, Fine arts, Architecture and Graphic design. For myself I see it back the most in this one.
I really like the composition and colour distribution and how Lissitzky combines the 2D/3D perspective, which makes the drawing much more architectural.
I think the later work of Kandinsky is in some way comparable. I’m talking about elements of composition, colour distribution wise and form contrasts.
What’s fascinating actually is that for example in these paintings ( K1, L1, K2, L2 ) the triangles, (half) circles, stripes and composition have so much in common. While the ideas of their work are so different. Kandinsky combines painting with music, which Lissitzky does with architecture.

What I appreciate is the modern way of exposing his work. I like the way he puts his drawing and his street-exhibition in one frame on the cardboard. And the fact that he paints on the photo. The street celebration design reminds me a bit of graffiti in legal manners. In Graffiti you have multiple meanings of doing it. Some do it for the adrenaline-kick, some for the group or competition feeling, some to show their design skills and others for  political statements or propaganda. This last example is what I see in a part of Lissitzky’s work.

I think it’s interesting to see how he uses his propaganda work in other work but then he integrates his in his autonomous work (proun. street celebration design).

All in all I think it’s a great work and a unique style. I really admire that Lissitzky makes so many different things, and still keeps it in one theme