What Is Design?: An Overview of Design in Context from Prehistory to 2000 A.D.

By Anne J. Banks

This book is an overview of the process of design as it has evolved from the earliest visual images and artifacts from prehistory to our modern practice of design. Originally written as a textbook for design students and design professionals, it is also oriented to the general public interest in the design arts and the fine arts.

Every object has a story to tell about its period in time, its culture, its maker and ways of making. This thought was the idea behind the making of this book - that we can read this story through the interpretation of the forms of objects.

Important influences on modern design have come from the Bauhaus and the French decorative arts. However, what the designer does is best expressed in the work of American industrial designer, Norman Bel Geddes.

Excerpt, page 55: Bell Geddes believed that design is primarily a matter of thinking and of envisioning how the customer would use the product. While every product has a specific solution, Bel Geddes instituted market research as an essential part of the design process. In his redesign of the counter scale for the Toledo Scale Company, he changed hand weights to a spring mechanism, cast iron to aluminum, enclosed the skeleton body in a white enamel shell and made the scale flush with the counter for ease of use, while retaining its basic function. Bel Geddess major innovation was the redesign of the Standard gas stove from a stylized furniture form to a single unit encased in clean white enamel. Rethinking the stove as a skyscraper grid hung with steel plates, he simplified the manufacturing process by creating twelve interchangeable components to form sixteen different models.

Source, Norman Bel Geddes, Horizons. "

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 13, 2005
• ISBN: 9781477179635

Anne J. Banks

Anne Banks is an artist and educator who received her BA from Wellesley College and MFA from The George Washington University. She exhibits her work in the Washington DC area as well as nationally and abroad. She is Professor Emeritus at Northern Virginia Community College where she was instrumental in developing a course in the history of design.

Book preview

Copyright © 2004 by Anne J. Banks.   21232-BANK

Library of Congress:      pending

ISBN:   Softcover         1-4134-5657-X

ISBN:   ebook               978-1-4771-7963-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

All photographs unless otherwise noted are by the author.

Cover credits:

Top image: Stone carved inscription from the Roman Forum,

2nd-1st C.BC

Bottom images left to right:

Gustave Eiffel, Eiffel Tower, 1889 Paris Exposition

Frank Lloyd Wright, The Robie House, Chicago IL, 1909, exterior view

X-shaped chair from the Chateau of Langeais, France, 15th century.

Carved wood with leather seat.

Detail of railing, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, The Glasgow School of

Art, 1898-1906, main building

The Bauhaus Workshop building, 1926, Dessau, Germany

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WHAT IS DESIGN?

An Overview of Design in Context from Prehistory to 2000 A.D.

Anne J. Banks

Contents

PREHISTORY

Pattern and Style

ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS

Concepts of Spatial Organization and Order

The Development of Written Forms and the Alphabet

Greek Design in Architecture and Figure Sculpture

Roman Design and Architecture

THE MEDIEVAL WORLD

The Carolingian Renaissance

Architecture

Medieval Society and Design

The Printing Press

Significance of the Printing Press

Design up to now

THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE AND HUMANISM

Renaissance Ornament and Design

Books and Printing

The Late Sixteenth Century

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SCIENCE AND THE BAROQUE

New Materials and Furniture Forms

Printing and Engraving

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CLASSICISM, NATURE AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Eighteenth Century Design and Oriental Taste

Design, Style and Eclecticism

The Early Industrial Revolution

Late Eighteenth Century Design

Enlightened Capitalism.

The French Revolution

Neoclassicism and the Style of the Empire

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND THE GREEK REVIVAL

THE GOTHIC REVIVAL AND THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

The Consequences of Industrialization

Design and the Machine

Nineteenth Century Design Theory

The Great Exhibition of 1851

The Crisis in Design

William Morris: Reform and the Arts and Crafts Movement

Some Questions Raised by the Arts and Crafts Movement

The Influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England and America

America

ART NOUVEAU

THE TRANSITION TO THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Graphic Design

Architecture

Germany

Henry Ford and the Assembly Line

THE MODERN MOVEMENT IN THE ARTS

Cubism

Expressionism, French and German

Futurism, DuChamp, Dada and Surrealism.

Russian Constuctivism

Dutch Constructivism De Stijl

The Issue of Ornament

GERMANY-THE BAUHAUS 1919-1933

The Bauhaus Curriculum

Faculty

The Dessau Bauhaus, 1926-1932, Berlin, to 1933; closed by Hitler

Bauhaus Design

THE FRENCH DECORATIVE ARTS-»ART MODERNE»

Fashion and Textiles

The Department Store and the 1925 Paris Exposition of Decorative and Industrial Arts

Le Corbusier and L’Esprit Nouveau

The Late Twenties and the Merging of Styles

THE MODERN MOVEMENT IN AMERICA

American Art Deco

Furniture, Interiors and New Materials

Industrial Design

Streamlining

Architecture/Skyscrapers

Typography and Graphic Design

Advertising Design/the Poster

Fashion Advertising, Surrealism and Photographv

Magazine Design and the New York School, Post World War II

Major Architects of the Twentieth Century

The New Designers

THE AMERICAN DREAM

Domestic Machines

POST MODERN DESIGN

Art and Design in Society/ Change and Protest

The Ecology and Crafts Movements

Furniture and Interior Design

Memphis

POST MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Post Modern Space

DESIGN AND THE COMPUTER REVOLUTION

Restructuring the Economy

The Question of Design

Craftsmanship, the Heart of Design

BASIC BIBLIOGRAPHY/SELECTED

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book evolved from a course in design history taught for 30 years at Northern Virginia Community College. It is developed for design students and professionals to integrate design theory with the practice of design. As the product of research and team teaching begun in the 1970s, it was one of the first design history curriculums taught in the United States.

I am indebted to my faculty colleagues, J. Robert Capps, for his support, professional advice and technical help in the development of the project and to Beverly Friedman for her teaching and valuable research in design I thank the students for their encouragement and enthusiastic participation in the course, without which this pioneer enterprise would not have been possible.

PREHISTORY

Image318.JPG

Prehistoric stone tools: top row; arrow points; middle

row, spear points; bottom, scrapers. From Southeast

Georgia, USA Photo: W. Ross Banks

Design has been a human activity since prehistoric times. It is that process of creativity by which forms come into being. Two kinds of objects were created by the first human beings, (1) those which were made for the purpose of extending their chances of survival and gaining control over a hostile environment, and (2) those which had a symbolic or magical character and were used to invoke supernatural powers. Prehistoric peoples found the prototypes for these forms in nature. From shells and stones, bones and animal skins they made objects for survival. When the hunter chose the most efficient stone for the task at hand he would begin to refine it, chipping and shaping it, adjusting his bodily movements in response to the material, while all the while conceptualizing the form for its ultimate purpose. In the process of working the material, the pleasure and satisfaction he invoked invested the form with an emotional content and thus, an esthetic value. The process of making and refining a material for a purpose became the basic original response of the designer to the design.

The prehistoric environment also contained fearful and dangerous elements, such as the Ice Age climate and the wild herds and predatory animals that roamed the steppes and forests. In order to control these dangers, prehistoric peoples captured the animals by imitating (drawing) their outlines on the cave walls. By drawing arrows and missile signs on the animal’s image, they would project the capture of the animal as well as its spirit, and thus control their success in the hunt.

Image325.JPG

Chinese Horse and Sign, Lascaux Cave, France, c. 20,000

BC Art/ResNY

The images, then, became magical emblems invested with power over the actual animals themselves. The concept of allowing an image to stand in for a real object was a leap of the imagination and the beginning of symbolic thinking. As the images were repeated over and over, in time they became more simplified, abstracted to the point where a simple sign or pictograph could stand for a single entity or a whole idea. Thus while supernatural powers could be invoked through signs and symbols, abstracted signs also allowed simpler and more universal communication between people.

Pattern and Style

As both these kinds of design forms developed, style and pattern emerged in more complex forms. The first survival forms, which can also be called primary forms, developed very early and became ingrained in the human psyche. These forms, such as the spear point, the hammer, and the column have changed very little in their form and function over the course of human history and differ only with the embellishments of each culture. For a style to emerge, it is necessary to have achieved perfection of technique and control over the form. At this point, forms become type forms, those which can be reproduced with standardized regularity and have a characteristic look which is their style. This is the beginning of style and usually marks the onset of a permanent society or culture.

Image334.JPG

Checkerboard pattern in a brick and flint stone wall at

Canterbury Cathedral, England

Many patterns began with the simple techniques of assembling and stacking materials. This can be seen in configurations on brick walls and chimneys and in patterns in building materials such as on half timber houses, arising out of structural necessity. Patterns are built up as the design maker embellishes his own objects to make them special and personal. Pattern making is essentially esthetic in nature and is invested initially with emotional or survival content or signs and symbols which have meaning to the society. Patterns often begin with natural elements which become abstracted as they are repeated. As patterns become ingrained in the culture they may lose their original meaning and simply appear as typical and traditional forms handed down for centuries; in other words, characteristic of a certain style. For example, the Egyptian column was originally constructed of bundles of papyrus stalks with the flowers at the top. When transformed into stone, the flowers became abstracted forms of the papyrus flower or bud. This is true of the Greek column with its capital of abstracted floral volutes or acanthus leaves.

Over time forms and patterns may change through individual variations or by being influenced by other cultures. They may change through the mixing of two older styles as different peoples come in contact through trade or migration. Thus, the original meanings have been lost or forgotten although the forms themselves persist.

ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS

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