Download - L01 Historical Overview

Design 200: Introduction to Design Department of DesignThe Ohio State University

What is Design?


Etymology & Grammar• Comes from Italian word disegno: drafting or drawing of

a work; or the idea at the root of a work.

• A noun and a verb.

“Design is to design a design to produce a design.”


According to the OSU Department of Design• Design is a purposeful, systematic,

and creative activity.


Fine Art vs. DesignThe primary motivation in:

• Art is usually oneself.

• Design is usually others.


Overview of Design History &

Contributions


The Real Beginnings• Stone tools created 2 million years B.C.

chopper hand axe scraper needle


Industrial Revolution• 1765-1880

• A shift from craft labor to mass production; workshops to factories.

• Mass production and interchangeable parts allowed design standardization.

• Steam engine.

• Mass production & Mass marketing.


The Steam Engine• James Watt

• 1765

• England

• Powered by steam: expanding and cooling water within a cylinder drove a piston up and down.


Mass Production• Cheap products, mass produced quickly.

• Poor quality.

• Many different styles: classical mythology, Baroque, Gothic, Romanesque, Renaissance.

• Lots of Ornamentation: machined lathed/band saw parts were interchangeable.


Steam Engine?

• Classical façade.

• Excessive Ornamentation


Toilet?• Reference to classical

mythology “Chimaera,” part lion.


Telephone?• 1888 on top

• 1914 on bottom


New Manufacturing Technologies

• Bent Beechwood

• Thonet, 1859 Chair No. 14

• Thonet, 1860Rocker


Mass Marketing• Josiah Wedgewood’s Pottery factory.

• Used old energy sources: horses, moving water; not steam; 1769.

• First to market to the middle class; pioneer of mass marketing; earthenware that was affordable, aesthetically pleasing, could take sudden changes in temperature; quick to produce.


Singer Sewing Machines

• 1850- Isaac Merritt Singer designs first in-line shuttle sewing machine.

• 1855- Singer becomes the world's largest sewing company. Singer begins overseas expansion, starting in Paris, France, making Singer the world’s first international company.


Installment Payments• 1856- Edward Clark, working for the Singer

Manufacturing Co., originates the “hire-purchase” plan, the prototype for all installment selling or time payment purchases.


World Fairs or Exhibitions

They provided an International marketplace, International competition, and exhibited the latest advancements in technology.

• London, 1851

• Paris, 1889


The Road to Modernism


Changing Aesthetics• Driven largely by new technologies in manufacturing and

materials.

• Steam bending wood

• Steel

• Glass

• Curvilinear vs. Rectilinear.


Curvilinear vs. Rectilinear

C. R. Mackintosh French Furniture Company


Curvilinear vs. Rectilinear

Henery van de Velde Frank Lloyd Wright


Frank Lloyd Wright• Guggenheim Museum

• New York, 1956


“Form follows function.”

• Louis Sullivan

• Chicago


Simplification & Abstraction


Perspective & Rationale


Corporate Identity• Peter Behrens

• AEG - Electrical Products Manufacturer


The Bauhaus• Founded in 1919 by

Walter Gropius

• Weimar, Dessau, Berlin

• Closed in 1933 due to the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany.


ConstructivismPropaganda & Social Messages


StreamliningTransportation, Future Forms, & Marketing


Evolution of a Chair


Red & Blue ChairGerrit Reitveld, 1918


Chair Marcel Breuer, 1921


Wassily Chair Marcel Breuer, 1925


Barcelona Chair Mies van der Rohe, 1929


Grand Comfort Lounge


Lounge Chair Wood Charles and Ray Eames, 1945


RAR RockerCharles and Ray Eames, 1948


Lounge Chair &

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eames_Lounge_Chair_Wood_(LCW)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eames_Lounge_Chair_Wood_(LCW)


Tulip ChairEero Saarinen, 1956


Panton ChairVerner Panton, 1959


That is about all we have time for.

Without taking another two hours to cover Scandinavien, Minimalism, Post Modernism, Deconstructivism...

Download - L01 Historical Overview

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