Designblog

Distinction

Stand-out

Taste

Those were my tree tags from the previous book I choose when we had to write about subjectivity.As you may have read in my previous blog post subjectivity is all about your own individual personal interests and characteristics. When I had to choose a book at random and not by its content the thing that mattered for me and that made me chose that book was that the book was different and therefore it stood-out from the rest and of course your own personal taste is always an important factor.

This time we had to do the same thing, pick a book out of the design section at the library but with a different approach. We didn’t have to choose a book based on subjective criteria but we had to choose a book using the tags that we made for the previous book, so basically the things that defined our subjective criteria now became our objective criteria. So now when I entered the library and went to the design section my goal was to find a book that was distinct as in different from the others, it had to stand out and of course my own personal taste had to be involved, cause basically I have to like the book in order for it to stand out or then I would like it because it stood-out (so it is still a little subjective).

So there I was standing in front of the book shelves looking for book covers that were different then the rest, looking for a book with some kind of new fond that is not used often or for colored stuff that would grab my eye (cause allot of the books have common fond and colors). And then I saw a popping yellow plastic side cover with stencil printed letters, so I picked it up and then I saw something that I have never seen before. The cover was a ruler, it also had this cut-out letters and shapes like the ones old rulers used to have for you to “write’’ or more like fill in the letters. At that point I knew that that was the book I was going to choose this time, the popping yellow made it stand-out and the cover was certainly different. It’s a really nice book.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: 772.9

When we start talking about choosing a book on subjective grounds, we must first really understand what the term subjective actually means. So what exactly does it mean? Subjectivity is something existing in the mind. A subjective evaluation is different for every individual, everybody differs from each other, each of us have our very own personal taste and characteristics. Subjectivity places emphasis on one’s own moods, attitudes, opinions, perspectives, it relates to properties or specific conditions of the minds as distinguished from general or universal experience. One chooses an object mostly based on his or hers own subjective criteria. If you were to be presented with the opportunity of getting one free book out of a library without actually knowing the content inside the book, that would be the moment when you start choosing based on your own subjective criteria, you would start judging the book by the cover, its layout, the colors, letter type, fond, the texture and of course based on your own personal taste and what you find interesting or not, what grabs your attention or not. When I was placed in this situation I started looking at the bookshelves after which I realized that most of the books look basically the same from the sides. Most of them seemed boring and didn’t grab my attention, the few that I actually took out of the shelf were the once that stood out, the once that had a different aspect out of all the other, like uncommon letter types, or a visually nice combination of colors.

The book I ended up with is a book called Nest. and it’s about interior design. I choose this book because it is really different than the others.  When I saw it on the shelf I thought that the book was placed on its wrong side, when took it out I noticed that this book actually didn’t have a side cover. I immediately liked the book, the front and the back cover are the same, dark grey (which is one of my favorite colors) hard cardboard , with big white letters for the title and a small white square with a few words about the content of the book. The cover itself is quite simple and plain, I’m a person that likes simplicity so this grabbed my attention. What I liked most about the book and the reason why I chose this one over all the other once is that this book doesn’t have pages it is actually a long flyer folded zigzagged into a book. So I guess what made me choose the book is the design of the book self and its layout.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: 774.5


Weldoordacht geklad en geklieder is wat er in mijn hoofd knalde toen ik dit boek uit de schappen trok.

Gewicht, omvang als dat van een saai oud wetboek. Maar uiterlijke kenmerken die speelsheid en frisse veranderlijkheid verraadden.

Het is een boek over sieraden, hedendaagse sieraden om precies te zijn. Allemaal ontworpen door (ex) studenten van ‘Munich Academy for Applied Art’[x]. Blad voor blad ontdek ik, dat mijn kennis over sieraden nog armer blijkt te zijn dan ik dacht. Dat, terwijl ik me verbaas over de vele opties en keuzes in materiaalgebruik, vormgeving, grootte.

Wat zijn hedendaagse ofwel autonome sieraden nou eigenlijk?

Is de term ‘Autonome sieraden’ niet wat de Engelsen een oxymoron noemen?

Een stijlfiguur zoals ‘knap lelijk’ of ‘oorverdovende stilte’?

Deze term lijkt in te gaan tegen het idee dat deze sieraden een toegepaste kunstvorm zijn. Dus daarmee, geen autonome. Wat is het verschil tussen een antieke trouwring en een neonkleurige kunststof ring in de vorm van een schedel? Misschien heeft symboliek ermee te maken, misschien het verleden. Voorheen hadden de sieraden behalve een decoratieve misschien wel meer een praktische functie.

Status, afkomst, burgerlijke stand en noem zo maar op.

Voor mij is de kunst van sieraden een toegepaste kunstvorm. Het is kunst dat op het lichaam gedragen word en heeft de functie de drager te onderscheiden van anderen, Of iets toe te voegen bij hem of haar. Iets wat hij of zij niet nodig heeft, maar wat alleen geld in verband met hem of haar.

Maar dan, een kunstwerk dat ‘ toevallig’ gerelateerd is aan het lichaam en alle eigenschappen bevat van een sieraad. Is dat kunstwerk per definitie een sieraad, dus dan ook toegepast?

Nee, vind ik niet.