Actual Crisis or Flourishing of Visual Communication

American University in Bosnia and Herzegovina

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Visual Communications

Final Exam

Actual Crisis or Flourishing of Visual Communication

Student: Professor:

Design is an important part of our life and we are able to see it everywhere. It is the human nature that created the need to live in an enviroment that is pleasent and esthetic, that has some kind of order and concept. There was the need that items are always in some way decorated. At a time when there was no industrial production, there was no substantial difference in creating  utilitarian objects and sculptures, both were individual products. Thus, the impact of the autonomous figurative art to create useful objects was spontaneous and logical.

At a time when the production changes and becomes material, the design of the product ceases to be art. Since then we distinguish unique items  and industrial products. When the utility objects started to be mass-produced, they had to get rid of excessive decoration that covers botch or ugly form.

At the end of the 19th century in England, the idea to connect artists and industrial production in order to fortify industrial products, and destroy imitation and kitsch is born. According to the understanding of  Bauhaus, the products should not be piggybacking decorations that would hide or repair ugly and shapeless parts, but these parts should be created in a beautifully, artistic way and the subject will be beautiful in itself. Under the influence of certain directions of modern art which seeks to simplify and find new forms, designing utilitarian objects gets a new meaning - to achieve the functionality of the object as a creative act. Bauhaus ideas are respected today in the principles of industrial design: unity of purpose (function), respect for materials and processes of mass production.

The designing of products by now, has become a process which designers have to think about a lot before making the descision to really produce it.  There is a crisis in design in my opinion. It is not just in design but in other segments too. For example, there is a crisis of the culture, of art, of the city, of the object, and so on. All of that influences design itself.

When the need for quantity appeared, quality and uniqueness started disappearing. The problem is that manufacturers want to profit and they started to think in another way. It was important to create something that is going to be functional rather than esthetic or something else.

The roots of the design crisis can be found in the cities where buildings were built because of the increased population. There was no plan of building the objects, and if there is no plan or concept, the esthetic is being lost. In order to give the people a home and to make it fast, the cities were full of buildings which were put into place without much thinking. The design was also unimportant, because the functionallity was on the first place.

One of the things that also started to accure was the loss of the culture and history of the cities. The decrease of values started to influence the design a lot. The cultural parts of the city were often replaced by buildings which were built because of the needs of people. At that point, the value of the culture and history started to decrease. Today it is more important to repair the demaged cities then to create cities of the future.