http://barkhasan.livejournal.com/2497.html international newport group latest reviews, Where Design Meets Life by Alice Rawsthorn Victor Papanek argued that all men are designers. None perhaps more effective than the early 18th-century pirate Edward Teach, the formidable Blackbeard. Teach's reputation as an indomitable pirate relied on the visual persona he created. Not just the beard itself but the whole ensemble of heavy coat, big boots and huge dramatic hat with lighted matches sputtering beneath the rim struck such terror in his victims that resistance fell away. He had no need of a degree in graphics to realise the long distance effect on those who saw the Jolly Roger. This kind of basic human instinct for designing is one of the main themes of Alice Rawsthorn's lively and stimulating book. This is a welcome publication for many reasons. First, deluged as we are with ever more enormous books on architecture, there are very few intelligent books about design. In this area Stephen Bayley was the pioneer, with a constant stream of witty, erudite and challenging writings on design from the 1980s onwards. More recently, in 2008, Deyan Sudjic entered the arena with The Language of Things. Rawsthorn's approach is different, more socially concerned, wider ranging in her interests and, yes, more feminine. It was Rawsthorn, don't forget, who created such a storm during her years as director of the Design Museum by promoting an exhibition on the flower decorator Constance Spry. More here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Newport-International-Group-Runway/377936102322068?ref=stream http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Newport-International-Group-Restricted-Common-4785496.S.201367255

1. Where Design Meets Life by Alice
Rawsthorn

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/10/hello-world-design-meets-life
international newport group latest reviews, Where Design Meets Life by Alice
Rawsthorn
Victor Papanek argued that all men are designers. None perhaps more effective than
the early 18th-century pirate Edward Teach, the formidable Blackbeard. Teach's
reputation as an indomitable pirate relied on the visual persona he created. Not just
the beard itself but the whole ensemble of heavy coat, big boots and huge dramatic
hat with lighted matches sputtering beneath the rim struck such terror in his victims
that resistance fell away. He had no need of a degree in graphics to realise the long
distance effect on those who saw the Jolly Roger. This kind of basic human instinct for
designing is one of the main themes of Alice Rawsthorn's lively and stimulating book.
This is a welcome publication for many reasons. First, deluged as we are with ever more
enormous books on architecture, there are very few intelligent books about design. In
this area Stephen Bayley was the pioneer, with a constant stream of witty, erudite and
challenging writings on design from the 1980s onwards. More recently, in 2008, Deyan
Sudjic entered the arena with The Language of Things. Rawsthorn's approach is
different, more socially concerned, wider ranging in her interests and, yes, more
feminine. It was Rawsthorn, don't forget, who created such a storm during her years as
director of the Design Museum by promoting an exhibition on the flower decorator
Constance Spry.

3. Another of her favourites is the Hungarian designer László Moholy-Nagy, a charismatic figure
whose students at the Bauhaus named him Holy Mahogany. Moholy took to dressing in a
boiler suit, not just as a practical measure but as a symbolic garment, marking his commitment
to making the rapprochement between industry and art. He invented theLight Space
Modulator, a machine for creating the experimental pools of light and shade, an object Moholy
considered so essential to his work that he took it with him in his flight from Nazi Germany in
the mid-1930s. To get this peculiar contraption through various European customs he described
it as hairdressing equipment. Rawsthorn adopts Moholy's central tenet: "Design is not a
profession but an attitude." She argues that design is not, as most people construe it, just a
matter of superficial styling. It's not simply the curves on a sleekly covetable sofa or the angle of
those glamorous high heels. According to Rawsthorn, design is "concerned with the whole
process of analysis, visualisation, planning and execution". It affects all human lives, for better or
for worse.
She draws pertinent examples from her own experience. Rawsthorn, author of a very good
biography of Yves St Laurent and now design critic of the International Herald Tribune, is a
seasoned traveller and she describes the bliss of arriving in the clarity and orderliness of Zurich
airport as opposed to the bewildering chaos of Heathrow or JFK. The difference is simply a
question of the signage, implemented in Zurich back in the 1970s by the brilliant Swiss graphic
designer Ruedi Rüegg. Where at Heathrow the competing signs and symbols induce panic, in
Zurich the traveller feels calm and in control.

4. We all have our own examples of innovations that seem like improvements but turn out to
be the opposite. Rawsthorn cites the espresso pod, the neatly sealed capsule that is faster
and less messy than ground coffee. But what about the packaging of those tiny capsules?
Rawsthorn reminds us sternly that the functional strengths of the espresso pod are negated
by its "environmental weaknesses and death of integrity".
An even worse example of designer overload is the bunch of bananas repackaged for sale in
a supermarket in what is described as "organic packaging". Repackaging bananas, surely
nature's best example of the perfect pre-pack, and then calling the repackaging "organic"?
Surely that way designer madness lies. Rawsthorn keeps a sharp historical perspective,
reminding us of how Giorgio Vasari in the 16th century defined Leonardo da Vinci as an
early example of a designer after seeing his immaculately detailed drawings for machinery
and engines. But her new book is intended less as design history, and more a succinct survey
in 13 brisk chapters of where design is now.
The effect of digital technology is proving both liberating and unsettling. The things we see
and use are changing with unprecedented speed as attention spans grow shorter, visual
awareness heightens and desires for distractions intensify. New products are being invented
almost daily while others become obsolete. What happened to the telephone? Who needs
an alarm clock when your smartphone will awaken you? For some, these rapid changes
seem baffling. Rawsthorn sees the "elemental role" of design in acting as our friendly
negotiant of change.

5. Try the doorbell test. The world is now divided into those who automatically press a doorbell
with their index finger and those who use their thumb. Which you do will, Rawsthorn tells us,
"reveal your age almost as accurately as the way you dance or how wrinkly your hands are".
All right, since you ask, I use my index finger, originating as I do in a pre-digital age, whereas
thumb users are people of a younger generation whose practice in typing text messages and
playing on games consoles has rendered their thumbs nimbler than any of their fingers – a
pertinent example of how the designed environment changes people's everyday behaviour.
In this quickly shifting world the designers' responsibilities become more complex. Far gone
are those days of certainty I knew back in the 1960s when I was design critic for the
Guardian. The subject matter of design was then what were rather primly called "consumer
goods". The thinking of that time was the simplistically optimistic hope that good design
would improve the lives of the deserving British public. Design was an aesthetic offshoot of
the welfare state.
Functionally pure tableware and cutlery, refrigerators, textiles and clean-lined convertible
sofabeds were selected year by year to receive the coveted Design Centre Awards. The prize-
winning designers were the nation's design heroes. I married one of them [David Mellor] so I
should know.
The scene described by Rawsthorn is altogether different. Since then designers have endured
Margaret Thatcher's "creative industries" policy followed by Tony Blair's Cool Britannia years.
No wonder they have turned into such driven, anxious creatures. Never mention Raymond
Loewy's all too capitalist mantra "good design is good business", still less his sweeping
statement that a designer's main responsibility is "to keep his client in the black". These days
such beliefs seem as outdated and embarrassing as jokes about bra-burning feminists.

6. Rawsthorn's most subtle and interesting chapters concern the rise of the designers'
conscience, their involvement in a multitude of projects that improve the lives of "the
other 90%" of the world's population. These are the people who have in the past
benefited least from the design profession's skills.
She mentions the way the speeding up of our lives has set up a contrasting craving for
nostalgia and quirkiness, vintage fashion, folklore and pretend games. Here she could
have made more of the considerable revival in handmaking of special one off objects at
the highest level of imagination, for example the resurgence of the beautiful book. I also
feel that she underestimates the hidden dangers in increasing design sophistication,
especially in the area of military weaponry. Barnes Wallis's dam-busting bouncing
bombs were child's play in comparison with today's unmanned surveillance drones.
Rawsthorn's title Hello World is irritatingly winsome. There is also the question of why
the design of a book about design, with its dizzying vertical page numbers and
inscrutable photography, is absolutely dire.
But this hardly detracts from the value and enjoyment of a sprightly survey that
counteracts the narrowness with which so many people think about design.
More here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Newport-International-Group-
Runway/377936102322068?ref=stream
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Newport-International-Group-Restricted-Common-
4785496.S.201367255

7. Rawsthorn's most subtle and interesting chapters concern the rise of the designers'
conscience, their involvement in a multitude of projects that improve the lives of "the
other 90%" of the world's population. These are the people who have in the past
benefited least from the design profession's skills.
She mentions the way the speeding up of our lives has set up a contrasting craving for
nostalgia and quirkiness, vintage fashion, folklore and pretend games. Here she could
have made more of the considerable revival in handmaking of special one off objects at
the highest level of imagination, for example the resurgence of the beautiful book. I also
feel that she underestimates the hidden dangers in increasing design sophistication,
especially in the area of military weaponry. Barnes Wallis's dam-busting bouncing
bombs were child's play in comparison with today's unmanned surveillance drones.
Rawsthorn's title Hello World is irritatingly winsome. There is also the question of why
the design of a book about design, with its dizzying vertical page numbers and
inscrutable photography, is absolutely dire.
But this hardly detracts from the value and enjoyment of a sprightly survey that
counteracts the narrowness with which so many people think about design.
More here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Newport-International-Group-
Runway/377936102322068?ref=stream
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Newport-International-Group-Restricted-Common-
4785496.S.201367255