What is the form of design?

Category: Culture/Art >> Calligraphy and Painting Art

Problem description:

What is the form of design?

Analysis:

French aesthetician Laro (1877- 1953) believes that the beauty of industrial products is a combination of many elements, just as polyphony music is a unified harmony formed by counterpoint. The form of a product is the external expression of material and structure, and it is a whole composed of certain material attributes that can be directly perceived outside the product, such as line, color, shape and sound. The shape design of products is a creative activity of industrial designers according to the functions of products. Every new product form means that it has certain formal significance. As far as pure formal beauty is concerned, it does not depend on other contents. So the German philosopher Kant called it freedom beauty, and Diderot called it absolute beauty and independent beauty. However, the formal beauty of product design is the beauty of dependence. To be exact, the formal beauty of product design can only be called the formal beauty of design if it is closely combined with practical function and operational function.

First of all, the form design of products has unique aesthetic significance.

Visual artists generally believe that the aesthetics of artistic works is based on people's intuitive feelings, and its ultimate goal is people's self-awareness and the confirmation of people's essential strength in social practice. Its essence is the spiritual production centered on aesthetics. Product design is mainly practical-centered material production, and its purpose is to design for people's practical needs. With the help of certain material media, artistic works create an image system with emotional implications. This image system is a visual or auditory aesthetic existence, and it is an artist's aesthetic reflection of reality, including both the reproduction of social life and the expression of the artist's own thoughts and feelings. Therefore, the beauty of art is the reflection of beauty. The product design of technological production is the material reality on which people live. It has not only material function, but also spiritual function, so the beauty of design is the beauty of reality. From this point of view, the formal design of products has unique aesthetic significance.

First of all, the beauty of color, shape and texture, that is, Hegel's "abstract and unified external beauty of perceptual materials" (Hegel's Aesthetics, Volume 1, Commercial Press, Edition 1979, Page 172), constitutes the beauty of natural materials in product design. The production of any product needs certain materials first, and materials are the first factor to form the formal beauty of product design. The sense of material and aesthetic feeling of texture formed by the texture and performance of products, as well as the different understanding of materials in modern design, have formed different design ideas and styles and formed complex aesthetic psychology. Human beings have the strongest, most direct and most impressive feelings about color. The aesthetic feeling of color comes from the physiological * * * of color visual perception and the rich experience association and physiological association resulting from it, thus producing complex psychological reflection. The formation of formal aesthetic feeling directly comes from the basic elements of form, that is, the physiological and psychological reflection produced by point, line and surface, and the understanding of the formal implication of point, line and surface. Among the morphological elements of point, line and surface, line is the most active and emotional element. Shape on the plane and shape in space are closely related to line in emotional attributes, such as jumping and quietness, complexity and simplicity, stability and lightness, seriousness and liveliness. Due to the accumulation of human practical activities and aesthetic experience, human beings have different aesthetic associations and imaginations about product forms, such as imitating natural forms, summarizing natural forms and abstract forms, thus producing different aesthetic feelings. As visible and sensible elements in product design, the beauty of material sense and texture will induce people's vision or tentacles. These different degrees of induction and * * *, will make people have different physiological and psychological effects, resulting in different degrees of beauty and ugliness.

Secondly, the spatial arrangement and combination of natural materials constitute the beauty that product design conforms to the formal law. The ultimate embodiment of the formal beauty of product design is that the overall shape of the product must conform to the law of formal beauty, that is, follow the recognized formal law. When the combination of color, modeling, texture and other formal elements conforms to the formal laws of symmetry and balance, harmony and contrast, people feel beautiful. As Gorky said, formal beauty is "a form that can affect emotion and reason, and this form is a kind of power." The formal beauty of product design, like the formal beauty of everything, follows the aesthetic principle of * * * *. This principle is the formal law of beauty. The formal law of beauty is the aesthetic accumulation of human beings and the formal law summed up in social practice. In a design product, it also involves the application of formal rules such as "change and unity", "contrast and harmony", "symmetry and balance", "proportion and scale" and "rhythm and rhythm". "Unity" makes people feel neat; "Change" brings * * *, breaking monotony and boredom; "Contrast" emphasizes individuality; "Harmony" emphasizes the same factors between things. Design products are different from those made by traditional handicrafts. They are symbols of modern civilization and are closely related to people's life and labor. When applying the law of form, we should especially emphasize the premise of giving full play to the practical function of products and the highest principle of creating function and aesthetic form. Of course, the law of formal beauty is not a golden rule, it is immutable. With the progress of the times and the renewal of people's aesthetic concepts, the law of formal beauty will inevitably change.

Second, the formal beauty of product design should have symbolic function.

Ernst Cassirer, a famous contemporary German philosopher, put forward the famous viewpoint that man is a symbolic animal, revealing that symbolic thinking and symbolic behavior are the most representative features of human life. Language, myth, religion, science, art and technology are all artificial symbol universes. Therefore, people actually live not in a simple physical universe, but in a symbolic universe created by themselves. In a sense, people are constantly dealing with themselves, not with things themselves. These expositions of Cahill reveal the essence of human beings to a considerable extent. In a wide field of vision, people often complete the task of human information transmission through symbol system, and symbols can be said to be the carrier of information. Some experts believe that science, technology and art are three different symbols. Generally speaking, scientific symbols are abstract and intellectual schemas. Technical symbols are concrete and will factors; Artistic symbol is the unity of concrete and abstract, and it is an emotional factor. Regarding the composition of symbols, Swiss linguist De Saussure (1857- 19 13) pointed out that symbols are the product of the combination of signifier and signified. The form of product design also has two different symbolic functions, namely, indicating function and symbolic function, thus forming two different product form symbols: indicating symbol and symbolic symbol.

The so-called index of product form is used to explain the function of the product and its components, that is, "what is this", so that the form has cognitive function. People make logical judgments such as "what is this product" or "how to use it" through product indicators and combined with past life experience, so as to further understand the utility function of the product and master the use method. The symbolic symbol of product form is to make people associate and realize the "how" of this product through modeling elements and their combinations. The content expressed by symbolic symbols is often indirect and implicit, with strong abstract elements. To accurately understand and appreciate the meaning expressed by this symbol, we must rely on certain abstract ability and imagination ability.

Symbol is the carrier of information, which has cognitive function to people, not only providing guidance for realizing this function, but also having aesthetic function in its material form and meaning. Therefore, there is no single aesthetic symbol, and the acquisition of aesthetic function is the result of its actual material state and meaning transmission. This can also be confirmed by the formal mechanism of product language. The formation of product language is the transformation from deep structure to surface structure, that is, it has to undergo the transformation from functional structure to form. The deep structure of product language refers to the material function of product, the relationship with human activities, the material technology and technical basis of product and its social and cultural characteristics. For example, there are big wardrobes, desks and so on. In single-room furniture, they are always marked with certain symbols to facilitate people's identification and use. Usually, the handle is the best indicator of drawers and wardrobes, and its forms can be varied, either bright or dark. The exposed wardrobe handle can be circular, button-shaped, rectangular or bowl-shaped. The concealed wardrobe handle can indicate that there is a hidden groove at the bottom or side with a certain space interval for fingers to pull out. Therefore, products must be designed and produced according to the requirements of planning objectives through preliminary design. However, it is not simply based on natural laws and natural forms like general technical products. It has both technical stipulation and relative freedom of formal expression. Compared with works of art, design products also have aesthetic connotation, which is not determined by the regularity of technology, but by the formal symbols that follow efficiency. But unlike works of art, it does not require uniqueness, but emphasizes the repeatability and reproducibility of products, especially products that must be produced on a large scale, reflecting the unified beauty of mechanical civilization.

Third, the formal beauty of product design embodies relative freedom.

Product design is a comprehensive embodiment of the cultural development of an era. The style of product design is accompanied by the cultural background of industrial production and the personal talent and wisdom of designers, leaving the imprint of information of the times, cultural characteristics, enterprise characteristics and personal feelings. Novo/Remnev of West Rocca said in the book "The Development Law of Modern Science and Cognitive Methods": Design still "has the freedom to choose the inherent possibility of objects, subjects and their interaction conditions. The universality and inevitability of objective law does not mean that it is single and unchangeable, but the ways and forms of law are varied. The objective law shows that it is universal in diversity, unchangeable in change and inevitable in contingency and freedom. " In other words, design is to create within the limits of technology, where grasping the laws of science and technology will not hinder creation; On the contrary, it can provide free choice for creation. Of course, as a practical product, designers can't let the aesthetic function of form replace and influence the practical function; At the same time, we can't tolerate ignoring human emotional requirements and style characteristics in pursuit of practical functions of products. Therefore, the formal design of products and the resulting formal aesthetic feeling should reflect relative freedom.

As individuals, due to different personalities, interests and hobbies, consumers put forward different requirements for the shape design of products. In addition to the practical functions demanded by consumers, different consumers also have different mental functions. Usually, the basic functions and external conditions of a product have been determined, and there are often many options for product shape design. As long as a desk lamp conforms to the lighting law, many styles can be designed; A coat, with the same fabric, can be cut into many different styles; What color is sprayed on the motorcycle body does not affect the performance and cost. Under the limitation of utility function and technical conditions, the possibility of designing a variety of patterns gains the "form freedom" of products. When industrial designers master the freedom of form, they can exert their subjective factors and imagination, adapt to the popularity of the market, and design personalized and diversified products that consumers are satisfied with. Excessive use of the freedom of formal design will increase the cost consumption or damage the basic practical function of the product.

As far as morphological factors are concerned, the surface decoration of a product has more freedom than changing its physical structure. For example, the change of line is more free than the change of surface, and color is the most varied and free of all formal factors. Because the inspiration of color is hazy and implicit, and color is related to people's emotions, it is most likely to cause emotional ringing and changes, so it becomes the most expressive "product language" of products. As long as industrial designers are good at using colors and have the ability to control color expression, they will get the greatest freedom of product form expression. Of course, the essence of design image is the designer's conception process of product form, and it is a creative imagination activity that combines rationality and aesthetic emotion. Italian architect Nervi (P.L.Nervi, 189 1- 1979) pointed out: "A technically perfect work may have poor artistic effect. But no matter ancient or modern, there is no masterpiece recognized from the aesthetic point of view, but it is not an excellent work technically. It seems that good technology is a necessary condition for a good architecture, although it is not a sufficient condition. " In other words, the organic combination of technology and art in design can be reflected in its aesthetic effect. The aesthetic creation of product form is based on the principle of functional orientation, which makes the exertion of product spiritual function contribute to the realization of the purpose and practical function of the whole product. In addition, different products will show different degrees of freedom according to their functions, such as mechanical equipment and household appliances. And daily necessities and decorations with aesthetic functions have the greatest freedom in form. However, the degree of formal freedom has no direct relationship with whether the product has good formal aesthetic feeling. For example, the blades of electric drills and electric fans are purely technical products or accessories designed by precise calculation, which reflect more rational and objective material existence, leaving little room for formal design, and can still show certain functional beauty and formal beauty.

The purpose of designing products is to meet people's needs, and the development of product forms is endless, so aesthetic design has no extremes and ends. As Gropius, the standard-bearer of Bauhaus, pointed out in Overall Architectural View: "History shows that the concept of beauty changes with the progress of thought and technology. Anyone who thinks he has discovered' eternal beauty' will surely fall into imitation and stagnation. True tradition is the product of continuous progress. Its essence is moving, not static. Tradition should push people forward. " . Product design urgently requires people to correctly understand the relationship between product form and aesthetics, and design and manufacture a modern "artwork" with formal aesthetic feeling-product design with "beauty" scale.