Politics of Design

In this modern life there seems to be an amazing need to save the world. This has become a huge excitement to all large companies who can use this ideological message in their advertising. The way I have noticed and seems to be quite popular is reusable shopping bags. Many supermarkets have jumped on the bandwagon and have made it into a little war of who can have the coolest, user-friendlier bags. The designs have to show they are the cleaner, greener supermarkets and it is best to shop there and use their reusable shopping bags. At the same time the consumer is also trying to find the coolest reusable shopping bag because then it looks as if they are taking their part in keeping the world clean, but looking stylish at the same time. This fad has inspired many designers out there to join in and get their own names out there by creating these bags.

The above bag is the reusable shopping bag for those who shop at Target. This design has not taken the typical green colour to use in their bag but instead used their own logo. Target also has their own range of reusable shopping bags available for those who prefur not to have the shop logo on it.

This expresses ideological beliefs in the way that people believe this will make a change in the world although indeed it will not make much of a change. The commercial world over exaggerates things to the point that you believe you are doing the world a great favor until you realize that you still use the same amount of plastic bags because you always forget the reusable ones. In the end its not the amount of awards, how environmentally friendly it is or shop loyalty that makes a difference, it is the design that catches your eye and makes you buy it.

cultural sensitivity

culturally insensitive

Having a picture of a woman in the kitchen and claiming it as our heritage is insensitive to the woman population. Certain people believe that the kitchen is where the woman belongs and this picture is just enforcing this. After the huge fight that woman activists had over their rights I believe that this is a turn back in time and could effect the way woman are treated in the future. Even when joked about this topic has a serious note behind it and having images like this is not helping.

culturally sensitive

This picture immediately brings to mind the NZ student culture but while many would think this culturally insensitive it is not. The fact that we as students drink so much coffee shows how much work we do and how much time and effort we put into it. The fact that we need coffee just shows we push the boundaries of normal sleeping habits so that need we need more help to keep going. Not a mental issue, merely our body not keeping up with our ambitions of having immediate success.

Technology+Process

One of the similar themes I see between the first year design program and the Bauhaus is the way we are taught to experience and feel the nature of the objects and substances we work with. We are encouraged to experiment and push the boundaries to become the master of materials before producing functioning forms with them. John Ruskin said “he who wishes to become master of colour must see, feel and experience each individual colour in its endless combinations with all other colours.” This relates to way we experiment with many different materials so we learn the properties and ways it can be manipulated to suit our way of expressing ourselves. Johannes Itten believed new personal experiences and discoveries would lead to a “new way of seeing”. I see this statement as the basis of our courses here in the first year design programme. The teaching in this course gives us a structure to apply to our design ideas to in an unobtrusive way, a way that makes the design stronger instead of preventing the development of the idea. Although teaching principles have evolved over the years the Bauhaus theories are still used in modern day as a starting point for design schools such as the first year design program here at Victoria University.