Design as Art: Bruno Munari (Penguin Modern Classics)

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This unique form that the leaf has — its structure — is determined by the veins and capillaries which carry the sap. The leaf is beautiful, not because it is stylish, but because it is perfectly natural — it has been created in its exact form, by its exact function. The essays in the book are part of social commentary, part musing and part criticism about the world of design, filled with “abused objects” and the tone of them sets the book apart from most other research tomes that otherwise dominate the world of design thinking. It is filled with observations and thoughtful reflections of the material world, which is one of the most powerful tools a designer can have.

Design as Art (Bruno Munari) - [PDF Document] Design as Art (Bruno Munari) - [PDF Document]

You can also become a spontaneous supporter with a one-time donation in any amount: GIVE NOW BITCOIN DONATION When designers assert that art has to be subjective, they’re typically referring to the way people judge the outcome of an artist’s efforts. This manner of thinking about art places a supreme emphasis on results. In other words, art equals objects, performances, and experiences. Art is a painting. Art is a dance. Art is a light show. The problem is that he treats readers as his consumers rather than his peers or pupils. This reads like a sales pitch. This is a book convincing the public that 'design is art', but not a book informing future designers what makes design that is art. Maxim Gorky: "An artist is a man who digests his own subjective impressions and knows how to find a general objective meaning in them, and how to express them in a convincing form." A piece of wonderful fancy, elegant prose mixed with deep humanism and all that written by well-educated, admirable man with an ironic spark in his eye.

Bruno Munari, polyhedric researcher and communicator.

Bruno Munari, ‘Works 1930–1996’, 2018, installation view, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York. Courtesy: Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York

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Bruno Munari was among the most inspirational designers of all time, described by Picasso as 'the new Leonardo'. Munari insisted that design be beautiful, functional and accessible, and this enlightening and highly entertaining book sets out his ideas about visual, graphic and industrial design and the role it plays in the objects we use everyday. Lamps, road signs, typography, posters, children's books, advertising, cars and chairs - these are just some of the subjects to which he turns his illuminating gaze. Vermeer had no formal artistic training and apparently did not undergo an apprenticeship as a painter. Today it has become necessary to demolish the myth of the ‘star’ artist who only produces masterpieces for a small group of ultra-intelligent people. It must be understood that as long as art stands aside from the problems of life it will only interest a very few people. Culture today is becoming a mass affair, and the artist must step down from his pedestal and be prepared to make a sign for a butcher’s shop (if he knows how to do it). The artist must cast off the last rags of romanticism and become active as a man among men, well up in present-day techniques, materials and working methods. Without losing his innate aesthetic sense he must be able to respond with humility and competence to the demands his neighbors may make of him. So, affordances are “perceived properties” of a function in design, and they need to be signaled to the user with “signifiers,” which provide clues to the user of the existence of a possible interaction. I don’t know how one would go about marrying the concepts of affordances and signifiers with “art.” They are essential interaction design concepts in the realm of HCI (human-computer interaction). They have nothing to do with art.

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Copying nature’ is one thing and understanding nature is another. Copying nature can be simply a form of manual dexterity that does not help us to understand, for it shows us things just as we are accustomed to seeing them. But studying the structures of nature, observing the evolution of forms, can give everyone a better understanding of the world we live in. One of the most influential designers of the twentieth century ... Munari has encouraged people to go beyond formal conventions and stereotypes by showing them how to widen their perceptual awareness' Munari cites from the school prospectus of Walter Groupis, who founded the Bauhaus in 1919 in what is considered the birth moment of design, with a lens on art education that parallels Isaac Asimov’s vision for science education: What does all this mean? Vermeer likely used an advanced, and still unknown, form of camera obscura to create his masterpieces. This is a contentious theory, but there is ample evidence from multiple sources to support such a claim.

Design as Art - Medium Book Review: Design as Art - Medium

While Munari’s precise level of ideological involvement with the regime remains a question of some controversy, his body of work far exceeds any facile reduction to propaganda, or even politics more broadly. Munari remained his own man, producing a mind-boggling range of experiments which straddle different media, discipline, genres and affects. His Illegible Writings of an Unknown People (1973) reveal a light-hearted meditation not only upon typeface design and legibility, but anthropological and linguistic mysteries (the latter evoked, too, in his famous 1958 Talking Fork). So, too, his Theoretical Reconstruction of an Imaginary Object (1971) combines the practical mechanics of engineering with an almost metaphysical play upon systems theory. Perhaps most striking on view at Kreps – amidst a striking range of experiments – are two Fossils from the Year 2000 (1959), which sandwich unrecognizable valves and mechanized parts between some transparent substance. Recalling Duchamp’s The Large Glass ( The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, 1915–23), the works conjure up a future where even the ‘futuristic’ apparatuses of modernity bear all the obviated mystery of some fossil frozen in amber. One of the ideas I enjoyed reading about that truly questions the relation between art and design was Munari’s reflections on ‘wearing’. He asks us to look at how an object is ‘worn’ and becomes ‘worn’ with use. He then asks if we should design on the sole merit of aesthetics or if we should limit ourselves to user-needs? Munari suggests that maybe we should design objects after observing how they have become worn with time.Clearly, Munari was writing in and for another period. That was a period spearheaded by designers-thinkers from the ranks of Nelson, Eames, Maldonado, Rittel, Bill, Aicher and Dreyfuss. These designers offer the insight that acute observation combined with thoughtful reflection of the material world is one of the most powerful forte of a designer.

Design as Art | Book Review - RTF | Rethinking Bruno Munari: Design as Art | Book Review - RTF | Rethinking

Our job is therefore to invent a new system of education that may lead — by way of a new kind of specialized teaching of science and technology — to a complete knowledge of human needs and a universal awareness of them. I’m not sure how it happened, Miklos, but it looks like we’ve found some sort of common ground, and I’m pleasantly surprised. Design is focused on achieving solutions with measurable results, whereas art is more concerned with expressing ideas that may have more than one meaning. Bruno Munari (1907-1998), born in Milan, was the enfant terrible of Italian art and design for most of the twentieth century, contributing to many fields of both visual (paint, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphics) and non-visual arts (literature, poetry). He was twice awarded the Compasso d'Oro design prize for excellence in his field. Art exists and has existed in every known human culture and consists of objects, performances, and experiences that are intentionally endowed by their makers with a high degree of aesthetic interest.How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision forever.