CCA DR Blog Post #11

Response to Pricing Beauty: Reflections on Aesthetics and Value, an Interview with Virginia Postrel.


For an independent study I pursued in college I read Virginia Postrel's book, Substance of Style. It's something that I should definitely return to and read again because I don't remember much from my first reading, only that she mentioned Starbucks quite a bit, and this article is re-peaking my interest, particularly Postrel's view on value and aesthetics. She claims that aesthetics are a source of value~economic, personal, or cultural and that while aesthetic value might have once been all about status, in our contemporary mass-market fueled world, that idea of status is disappearing and moving horizontally instead of vertically. Aesthetics as a value is reaching a larger population and because there are so many aesthetic choices to be made today, diversity becomes a key factor in self-expression. From the clothes we wear to the coffee we drink, we have multiple options and can form an identity through these consumer choices.

Postrel believes that aesthetics are a source of value, but they are also a source of conflict, which Postrel claims, "is where it leads into politics." Much of Postrel's sense of aesthetics is based in consumerism, and I can't help feeling that she also believes our personal identities are created by consumerism. Yes, we may have a wide variety of choices of items and gadgets and clothing to purchase, but it's a scary (albeit sometimes fairly true) thought that we express who we are through the things we buy.

Our economy is based on consumerism and while we might develop smarter and more clever and more aesthetically pleasing ways of being consumers, I truly hope our ability to buy interesting products is not what ultimately shapes our sense of identity. If one preached that we should buy more aesthetically pleasing products that we would want to keep for years and years, that would be a different story, but consumerism is an extremely political and charged subject. We are now telling the emerging middle classes in China and India that they should consume like Americans but to what benefit? All I can see is a quicker deadline for the impending doom of our planet. It's one thing to write a book concerning an approach to aesthetics like Lawrence Weschler's book, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees about Robert Irwin and his career as an artist; Irwin's value of aesthetics brings an interesting approach to the table, which in a sense is what I think Prostel is getting at. However, when your value of aesthetics is tied into a company like Starbucks, I think you are treading a very thin line between asserting that aesthetics has a strong cultural value and the idea that our cultural identities are merely built on our ability to be great consumers. Ultimately I think Postrel is trying to assert that aesthetics in our society has a permanent value, but her illustrations of this point are at times a bit scary and could be easily misread.

CCA DR Blog Post #10

This wasn't my favorite presentation,but it definitely caught my attention because one of the Swedish designers it mentioned created the above image, which is quite amusing. I just thought I'd share:)

The presentation that I enjoyed the most was one entitled "Details" which was presented by Toby Hyam, the Managing Director for Creative Space Management in Leeds, UK. Hyam professes that "our world is about details and information." The initial image he uses, a photo focusing on the nape of a woman's neck, is the beginning of a series of photographs that on the surface aren't of anything particularly interesting or innovative, but upon further examination, lead the viewer to focus a little more intently, and examine what's happening in the photographs a little deeper, because after all, he is trying to illustrate a "condition" that he has which involves focusing on the details.

Hyam talks about how creative people have an innate ability to focus on the details and it's not about ignoring the larger picture and focusing on the insignificant. It's actually about being able to see something that others would never see ~ never notice ~ never take the time to examine and then capitalize on that ability and put something important out into the world. That is why creative thinking is so vital ~ we think about the details ~ we understand how important they are for innovation and creating novel approaches to situations, small and large.

Perhaps this might not appear relevant on the outset, but a few years ago, living in New York, I had the experience of having bedbugs twice in one summer. I remember the first night I saw one. It was late, 3 am perhaps. I was reading in bed and wearing a new t-shirt that I had bought in an awesome downtown boutique. It was an impulsive and overpriced purchase. The pattern resembled miniature leopard spots but in black and white. The t-shirt, for lack of a better descriptor, was rather "loud" and any small creature could have easily camouflaged itself in the pattern, particularly a creature with chameleon-like capabilities. But I saw it. I saw the bedbug out of the corner of my eye, scuttling through the pattern on my t-shirt. And I freaked out.

Later that summer, having just moved to a new apartment, I came home around 11pm from spending a weekend in Boston. Even before I entered my room, through the doorway, I saw it again; a sad, desperate, tiny bug hanging out on my bed like it was no big whoop. I freaked out of course and shared a bed with my roommate that night. You ask, what in the world does seeing bedbugs have to do with details? For me, it's reflective of the fact that I am incredibly sensitive to details. When I returned home that night, I immediately noticed the that which was out of the ordinary. A year or two after having bedbugs, I was visiting my cousin in Austin and I pointed out some ants crawling on his bathroom wall. Surprised, he inquired how I could have noticed something so tiny and in my head I thought, "How could you not notice that!?"

I always thought that everyone saw images in clouds. It never occurred to me that there might be people who don't. It never occurred to me that there might be some people who don't notice red ants crawling on their white wall. And it's truly been a recent revelation that there are details I notice very easily that others will never be able to see. The bedbug story is merely to illustrate that I'm always hyper-aware of the details, small and large. The challenge is channeling that ability into creative solutions, particularly in an age that is driven by technology.

Peter Guber pointed out in The Four Truths of the Storyteller, a good storyteller has to appeal to the senses and emotions of the listener. Hyam's "condition" resonated with me on an extremely personal level and therefore I became emotionally invested in what he was saying. It not only applied to my individual experiences and capabilities, but it also connected me to a larger community who also believe they "suffer" from a similar "condition". It's all in the details.

CCA DR Blog Post #9

Q: Reaction to Tim Brown's challenge to designers.

When Tim Brown started to talk about his first few jobs as a designer (which I loved by the way...I think it's great to hear about successful people's kind of blah or not very successful moments in life) I thought of my own path towards becoming interested in design, and my first initial interest was created by a love of personal expression through fashion and fashion design.

A lot of my high school experience was pretty boring and I often found myself taking classes that I thought would get me into a good college and not usually the ones that really interested me. I entered college thinking I was going to be an International Relations major, so as you can imagine, my high school class choices had not been particularly exciting. To fuel my creative sensibilities in high school, my outlet became the outfits that I created for school each day.

Luckily, my undergrad experience in New York allowed me a variety of opportunities to be involved in the fashion world. My first was interning at Vogue magazine in the accessories department, which I hated. Then I did a summer program at Parsons in fashion design and I hated that too. I was a bit disheartened because I love textures, fabrics, textiles, the drama of fashion, even the manufacturing of clothes...but I think Tim Brown puts it best with his concept of "small design". I always felt like I was participating in something incredibly trivial. Yes, I love the aesthetics of fashion but when I had the opportunity to work in it, I was always bored and afraid that I would spend my life designing t-shirts. For some people this probably sounds like the greatest job in the world, for me it sounds like creative purgatory.

In the fall of my senior year of college, I interned at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. While there, I had the opportunity to write the press release for an exhibit called, Design for the Other 90%, which explored designs that were being made in and for developing countries. It was a very small task in the scheme of bringing this particular exhibit to fruition, but it felt far more important that anything I had done at Vogue. I really did feel part of something greater than myself. Maybe if the exhibit had been one on lighting or chairs, I wouldn't have felt this way, but this exhibit peaked my interest in how design could fit into a larger picture and create solutions.

I'm not yet sure of how I'll reconcile my love of textiles and fashion with creating systems and solutions as a designer, but my reaction to Tim Brown's challenge is this:

Bring it on.

CCA DR Blog Post #8

This infographic comes from Visualizing.org.
Of course the infographic that appeals to me the most is the one about New York City. I think part of that is having just moved from New York, it is on my mind a lot. Some of the immediate appeal of this visualization was the emotional attachment that I have to this city but then there is also the experience that I have with the action they are visualizing: moving in new york. I'm sure that the same conversation topics apply here in San Francisco because it is an equally expensive city with a high demand for people wanting to live in it. Moving and subsequently real estate become fascinating topics that one brings up at parties and social events because one spends so much time dealing with moving in New York, particularly one in their twenties. It's an easy topic to discuss with others because everyone in New York has had some experience with it and it's a neutral topic like talking about the weather.

Another element of this infographic that is appealing is it reminded me of something that would appear in New York Magazine, which again holds emotional attachment because it is all about New York and in general, is just a great magazine.

However, despite this infographic being initially extremely appealing, it's not particularly easy to read. The graphics go back and forth between percentages and numbers and upon reading the description of the visualization, you understand that it's based on responses to a radio station poll. Without that information though, it's a bit hard to tell where the numbers originated from and why there isn't a consistency between expressing the data in a percentage or actual numbers. At the same time, the absence of uniformity forces you to pay a little bit more attention to the data and because it's not expressing an extremely complicated topic, it's never particularly confusing. It just takes a moment to figure out what information is being expressed. Overall it's really the aesthetics and the topic of this infographic that appeal to me.