Fashion
Substance over style
By the 1930s, the teardrop shape, known since the turn of the century to be the form of least resistance, was incorporated into Boeing and Douglas aircraft, and, being the contemporary artifact that best symbolized the future, the airplane set the style for things generally. The most static of mundane objects were streamlined for no functional purpose, and chromed and rounded staplers, pencil sharpeners, and toasters were hailed as the epitome of design.
...Though all design is necessarily forward-looking, all design or design changes are not necessarily motivated by fickle style trends. The best in design always prefers substance over style, and the lasting concept over the ephemeral gimmick.
Form eschews function
Many of the most contemporary silverware patterns appear to be designed more for how the pieces look than for how they work...There is a kind of design that can ignore function entirely. We might say that this is a "form eschews function" school of design, and one that places considerations of aesthetics, novelty, and style above everything else.
But to design from the handle is to shoot from the hip when it comes to silverware, for the business end of the individual pieces is where the action is going to be. Though Emily Post may not have perceived that tradition emerges out of the minimization of failure, there is no excuse for a designer to overlook the fact. Yet this is exactly what modern product designers seem to do when they strive so hard for a striking new look that they throw out function with tradition.
Good design is practical design
In the context of web design, Dieter Rams’ principle is not only a resounding criticism against mindless trends and meaningless decorations. It is a humanist reminder to put material honesty and social responsibility above the pursuit of the “pixel perfect” design.
Good design is timeless
Good design is timeless. Aiming at timelessness is a way to make yourself find the best answer: if you can imagine someone surpassing you, you should do it yourself. Some of the greatest masters did this so well that they left little room for those who came after. Every engraver since Durer has had to live in his shadow.
Aiming at timelessness is also a way to evade the grip of fashion. Fashions almost by definition change with time, so if you can make something that will still look good far into the future, then its appeal must derive more from merit and less from fashion.
A new wearer of clothes
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
Who did the teaching, then?
It has been contended sometimes that our response to works of art is entirely learnt and in no way innate; but the questions 'Who did the teaching, then? and how?' have not, I fancy, been much investigated. This contention is very true of our responses to styles and fashions, but it is not true of our response to beauty.
Tradition
Change is of the essence of tradition. Our declining civilization has largely lost the conception of tradition as continuous change by small variations – as evolution, in other words – and can produce only fashions which, one after another, appear, live for a little while, and die without issue.
A timeless quality
Of all Rams’s products, the 606 Universal Shelving System is perhaps his most successful in fulfilling his own principles of good design. It is still in production today, some fifty years after its conception. The system is distinctive yet unobtrusive, and when the shelves and cabinets are filled, its slim profile allows it to fade quietly into the background.
Its ‘plainness’ lends it a timeless quality that has transcended the vagaries of fashion like no other of Rams’s designs. It was conceived in such a way as to optimize its function as simply and in as many different situations as possible, while still permitting upgrades and alterations without falling into obsolescence: all later adaptations and additions could still be integrated into the original structure and sizes.
"Fashion objects are not capable of being long-lived," said Rams in 2007. "We simply cannot afford this throw-away mentality anymore. Good design has to have built-in longevity. I believe that the secret of the longevity of my furniture lies in its simplicity and restraint. Furniture should not dominate, it should be quiet, pleasant, understandable and durable."
Woodblock Prints
An Essay from The Beauty of Everyday Things by Yanagi SōetsuIt seems to me that many printmakers are suffering under a delusion. Looking at current trends, it appears that recent prints are simply copying fine art and painting. Some printmakers are working in the nanga style of painting. Others are attempting to reproduce the effects of oil. Some cleverly contrived prints are often difficult to distinguish from paintings done with a brush. The question arises: Why are these printmakers working in the medium of woodblock printing at all?
For prints to follow in the footsteps of painting has very little meaning. The art of the brush and palette should be left to the brush and palette.
Reading Design
A WebsiteReading Design is an online archive of critical writing about design. The idea is to embrace the whole of design, from architecture and urbanism to product, fashion, graphics and beyond. The texts featured here date from the nineteenth century right up to the present moment but each one contains something which remains relevant, surprising or interesting to us today.
Letters to the Future
The lapse of many years
At this point I wish to emphasize what I believe will ultimately prove to be the greatest purpose of our museum. This value will not, however, be realized until the lapse of many years, possibly a century, assuming that our material is safely preserved. And this is that the student of the future will have access to the original record of faunal conditions in California and the west, wherever we now work. He will know the proportional constituency of our faunae by species, the relative numbers of each species and the extent of the ranges of species as they exist today.
— Joseph Grinnell, 1910
The Grinnell System
The recording of field notes was common practice for biological surveyors and naturalists generations before Grinnell. His system continues this tradition but is distinguished by its distinctive standardized format. It consists of three sections:
- The journal contains a narrative account describing the study site and summarizing each day’s activities and observations, including a list of species encountered. This section is often peppered with sketches, photographs, or maps.
- The catalog is a sequential record of all voucher specimens collected, each with a unique field number and the information needed for the specimen’s museum tag, such as its sex, mass, breeding status, and standard body measurements.
- Species accounts are species-specific summaries of information and observations, gradually accumulated over multiple days at a site or across multiple sites, that eventually grow to detailed summaries of physical description, seasonal behaviors, microhabitat associations, and other characteristics.
Separating the notebook in this fashion allows each section to have its own context-specific structure and format.
Jim's system
From the earliest days of my fieldwork until now, throughout a given day I jotted notes, typically in pencil, into a small, spiral-bound pocket notebook, remembering the admonition not to trust one’s memory but to record observations as continually as possible. I then transcribes these notes into my handwritten journal in the evenings on the best of days or every few days when an intense field effort allowed.
From 2000 onward, I would still takes pencil notes in a small pocket notebook in the field, but I transcribes these into a word-processor document with margins set for the size of our field note pages. I combined this document with my field catalog for a particular trip and eventually both would be bound in the same manner as standard, handwritten field notes.
This approach had the advantage of producing both an archival paper copy as well as an electronic copy. It was also easy to intersperse specialized maps and digital photographs, which had become the norm by this time, throughout the journal text.
John's system
I have two field notebooks: a “raw" notebook and my formal Grinnellian notebook.
In the field, I take all my raw notes in a waterproof notebook using a fine-point permanent pen (or pencil when its raining). The entries have virtually no structure other than the date at the top of (almost) every page.
At the end of the day, I transcribe the notes into my Grinnellian journal as if I were writing a latter to a colleague.
Record them all
You can’t tell often in advance which observations will prove valuable. Do record them all!
— Joseph Grinnell, 1908
Recommendations for field notes
Being an end-user of someone else’s field notes certainly gives you insight into the benefits of good note-taking skills. Our experiences as end-users and creators of archival field notes lead us to a few specific recommendations:
(1) Don’t get bogged down in the details of format or style.
Rules are counterproductive if they prevent a researcher from taking field notes in the first place.
You will get more return by focusing on your content than by refining your formatting.
(2) Compose your notes as if you were writing a letter to someone a century in the future.
Writing for an external audience requires you to be more explicit in your descriptions and to take less knowledge for granted. Avoid the use of abbreviations, symbols, and other shortcuts that only you will understand.
Ask yourself: How would you describe this to someone over the phone?
(3) It is better to spend five minutes writing the important details than twenty minutes writing the trivial ones.
Field notes
Field notes example.
Camp's notes
Grinnell-era field notes example, Charles L. Camp.