Information and  design

The aims of this paper is to analyse the contribution of the process of information on the development of an idiosyncratic design culture, through artístic, architectural and engineming in­fluences.

With the development of new technologies. information has acquired an important role in social activity, but an excess of in­formation has had a certain numbing effect on people's minds and their capacity for action.

In a consumer society where the ways to sell and even co self-sell are of the uttermost importance, any informative activity becomes corrupted by publicky.

The priority of image in today's communication makes indus­trial products depend on the fast consumption of visual experience.

The information system of technology and design-emission sources, communication media and audiences must fínd a balance between publicity and cultural information.

Knowledge does not only depend on information. To build a Design Culture —past, present and future — something mone than news and images are needed. Theory is needed too.

An improvisation on design and new technologies

A community's eviroment and its degree of development (cul­tural, social, economical, scientific) conforms its particular need of design (products, services...) as well as the supply of resources that the designer finds at his disposal.

Obviously the technological level of a community is one of the conditioning factors that determine the production consumption of design; from the start technical innovations have had their influence on the process of design of a community, modifying the degree of consumer demand and increasing the number of resour­ces available to the designer.

The characteristic of our times is that on the one hand, innova-ting phenomena is speeding up and is very widespread, and on the other hand that the degree of diffusion of information and its speed of transmission is very high.

The consequence of all this is the existence of a well-nourished «design industry», obliged to reconsider its creations very hastily and forced to safisty the demands of a very large sphere, if compared to its natural scope, the field it covered only fifty years ago.

Design and craftsmanship

In this paper we intend to analyse and consider the impact of present technologies on the sphere of industrial design. especial in what refers to the overcoming of the traditional dichotom between «craftsman process and industrial pracess of production»

With the advent of new technologies, industry is ready to appropiate many values which it had been unable to adapt to its system before. and which it had been forced to reject. from feeling of impotence. in the name of a particular kind of functionalism that was presented as a universal value.

Among these changes one may mention the disappearance of the old problem of ornamentation applied to industrial object without betrayrng, therefore, the inherent qualities of the mass produced objects. Another aspect that is definitely overcome by these changes is the rigidness that results from a preestablishe industrial design of unique objects, to which the individual has to adjust. The new forms of computenzed production have enable the creation of flexible objects in continual construction, in the search of individual participation and compromise.

Process of design and the new technologies of information processing

This paper presents the reflections of a design professional who is confronted with the new computering facilities at his disposal. The following aspects are dealt with: the typical reactions of pro­fessionals when faced with these new facilities, a brief consideration of the initial misfunctions these new means may bring about, an account of the technical achievements which have made them available and finally  a reflection on the software inventory of use to the designer; in reference to the latter, the author puts forth the idea that not only  are the CAD-CAM «packs» necessary —as one might conclude from a superficial survey—,but also all the other software instruments that have a direct incidence on the storage and handling of indispensable information for the process of development of the design project.

The article also includes a bibliographical list of european and american magazine articles that refer to the subjects mencioned in this paper.

Posthumous Tzara

The author reviews Tristan Tzara's thoughts on word and art. The dadaism's initiator, from background of the insuperable precartousness of ideas, from his view of european weakness, makes an onslaught against future. and he gives an approach different from Breton.

The Young Designers

One of the most interesting points at issue in the current polemic of «Design Projects» is an eventual encounter between designers and artists.

Painting and Colouring imply a visual concept only, with no further views on usefulness and its organization. The young designer concentrates on himself, centering his attention on elements of visual thought and supported by one only hypothesis: the painted object is alive It is in this way that we grasp the Painting Design. It is necessary to have a personal vision of the world because of the insufficiency of the project's truthfulness. Only an intellectual loneliness can give place to this sort of contribution.

Em sembla que un dels punts més interessants de l'actual problemàtica del «Projecte de Disseny», consisteix en el possible enfrontament (o topada, o polèmica, o potser només relació) entre el dissenyador-artista i l'artista-dissenyador.

Meaning in art in way of disegno. Or why does kooning draw with his eyes shut

To put it very briefly. artistic production can ben described as an imposition of a formal order on some previously given material. Artistic formalization is therefore considered —ever since the classics— as an act of delimitation in its aspects of fixing and enclosing. The most convenient element for formal delimitation is the line or profile. It is the renaissance «disegno» which clearly exposes the problem of creativity in art (invenzione). This poetical creative function derives from the aspect of fixing that the line (drawing as projecte and delimitation: design) involves. But it also depends on some other factor: according to the latest theory is the opposite of the determining order: some kind of rebellion of the artist agains the lingüístic prescriptions.

If art teaches us to see the world, it is not thanks to what we see in it (formal order: figures, bodies) but for its announcement of all the things that come behind it. How should one call it? Let's call it the «desfigure» that underlies any figure: let's call it the «inimage» that runs through any image The intuition of the inimage beyond the image, of some kind of profileless magma beneath the figure's profile is a privileged intuition that brings us near to naked reality, the other side of language.

The order of art (disegno) is the lenitive veil that hides from our sight the very same thing of which it announces an existence that has become unbearable

To design: to inform, to persuade, to intimidate, to designate

Working in graphic Design involves projecting certain types of texts, that we shall call graphic Design texts which are inserted in the execution of specific communication acts.

Graphic Design consist mainly of the following communication acts: informing, persuading. intimidating and designating. These acts run parallel to the illocutionary acts that take place within the setting of the speach acts.

The graphic design texts act as catalysts of complex articulacions of the actions of the subject of communication. Each kind of communication act in which the graphic Design texts are circumscribed implies a specific contract by which the motives, intentions and aims of the subject of communication are defined and the legal relationship between them is determined.

The projection of the graphic Design texts is carried out strategically, always endeavouring to optimize the semiòtic resources at play and relating this to the different types of communication acts that these texts contribute to produce.

The return of ornament

After a lapse of two generations, the polemic about ornament has revived with new strength, being a question that the Modern Movement undertook to clear up definitely; but nowadays this movement no longer exerts its moral authority on the young ge  nerations of designers who claim the right to decoration. On the other hand, progress achieved in modern technology no longer justifies the rejection towards ornament in the way that the spiri tual parents of modernity had felt it. The origins of this rejection lies in nineteenth century formal decadence. The english reformers undertook a spiritual crusade against ornament; their vienese colleagues. on the contrary, adopted a far more drastic and materialistic attitude; the essay «Ornament and Offense» became the Modern Movement's creed. Branzi and other authors vindicate ornament from a socio-linguistic point of view; according to them, ornament is communication about a product

Design and identity anxiety

In our country design, and in particular industrial Design is experimented a very active phase due to a diversity of reasons that  give good hopes for the future. In very different fields design is  Spoken of and is given much attention in the mass media. This  sometimes gives place to an informative intoxicacíon in relation  to the explanation of what Design is.

There are such qüestions as: what is industrial Design?. which  are its historical antecedents? what are the differences between  its branches? which is its field of application, its límits and possibilities?, that may be answered in different and at times contradictory ways, owing to the fact, in my opinion, that the theoretical  body of teaching has not defined its nature with precision.

The article comments on the lack of historical analysis intrínsic  to industrial Design, that is to say with no mediation of architec ture art or engineering. It is suggested that one of the causes for this abscnce is that the «official definition» is ambiguous and allows  any sort of interpretation. Another cause may be the little emphasis laid, when speaking of industrial Design, on the nature of  the object and its shape as being the centre of design's field  of intervention, or on the complex interrelationship of the individual with the world of objects that surrounds him.

The design of objects shapes, product of a certain field of industry, is liable to undergo the most astonishing and significant  evolution as consequence of the relentless development and so phistication of the material, technology and means of production.  Nowadays the objects plays the main role. The designer as a shape specialist has an important part in all these events.

The functionalist concept of Bauhaus in the society of economical boom; the Hochschule Für Gestaltung of Ulm.

The author analyses the origins of the function of design and its development within the Bauhaus, taking into consideration its històrical context and man's reIationishi with the objects it created. He follows the historical evolution of Bauhaus under nazism and its course of development in the Germany of economical expansion which brought about of functionalism in the new affluent society.

He also examines the latest years, after the 68' crisis, the cosing down of the Hochschulle für Gestaltung and its lasting influence.

Considerations on the post-modern phenomenon: a critical approach to some attitudes and manifestations of design and contemporary

The opposition between modern and post-modern architecture and design urges us to inquire into the ethical and aesthetical foundations of this division.

If we analyse the relationship between object and society, we realize that the former is a sign of the latter. If we venture beyond this saussurian analysis, we fall into the «confliction» of the sign and there on we move it away from the signified, from society. Thus, the goal of modern architecture of contributing to change society has become in post-modern architecture that of searching for mechanisms that only change outward details without really bringing about any substantial change. 

The Mies Pavillon in Barcelona: a polemical reconstruccion

The article «The Mies pavilion in Barcelona: a polemical reconstruction» presents a fair sample of the different opinions that have appeared as a result of the reconstruction, in Barcelona, of the pavilion that Mies van der Rohe built in 1929. Although the official and most widespread view-point is favourable towards the project, several criticisms have sprung from different sources, of which this article shall try to give an organized account and place within the right context. Thus the article takes a look at the main subjects on which the polemics has centered: the suitability of reconstructing a work of art of the past; whether or not the essence of the pavilion lies in its ephemeral character; the location of the reconstructed pavilion; the ideological appraisal of the pro­ject the relation to the pavilion's contemporary myth seen through its photographs and the technical correctness of the replica. The article follows diallectically all these antagonistic arguments and concludes by postulating the need to speak of replica and not re­construction.

Is the graphic computer an aid 0r a substitute of the designer?

Although the usefulness of the graphic computer has been questioned, its importance nowadays to the designer cannot be denied.

The author supports this thesis by examining the past and giving us a view into the future.

In view of this controversy he puts the man-computer relationship —in the case of the interactive graphic— in its right place.

In his opinion the designer who works in this way becomes a director, in charge of a project and a scene which is always different and in which he not only attends to the computer but is free to be creative and to follow his own initiative.