Design

Design may be more or less Abstract, Applied, Functional, Graphic, Decorative, and Ornamental. There are Professional, Theoretical, Personal, Social, Cultural, Traditional, Topical, Contemporary, Industrial, Conceptual, and many Functional orientations, etc.

Developments may proceed through personal appreciation of the arts and art works on a very general level . . . . or may proceed specific to a discipline [i.e., Oil Painting, Photography, Intaglio, etc.] or disciplines . . . . or may proceed with focus upon categories of visual arts experience [i.e., aims and objectives involved with visual elements and relationships] . . . . or may proceed specific to a Historic, Cultural, Practical, Theoretical, or Topical focus.

The Elements of Design
My theorization begins with a list of elements of design. This list is necessary because the elements will form the basis of all our future discussions. The elements are, in fact, very much related to each other and cannot be easily separated in our general visual experience. Tackled individually, they may appear rather abstract, but together they determine the ultimate appearance and contents of a design.

Four groups of elements are distinguished:
a) Conceptual Elements [Point, Line, Plane, Volume]

b) Visual Elements [Shape, Size, Color, Texture]

c) Relational Elements [Direction, Position, Space, Gravity]

c) Practical Elements [Representation, Meaning, Function]

[Wong, Wucius. Principals of Two-Dimensional Design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1972.]

Design - Observing Natural Forms
Natural forms are diverse, but possess the same basic structural characteristics determined by natural laws governing their growth. It is helpful to observe and identify the environmental forces that affect the shapes of natural forms. The shapes of the components of natural forms and how they work together structurally should then be examined. [Wong, Wucius. Principals of Two-Dimensional Design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1972.]

Principals of Two-Dimensional Form: Design is the entire composition of which form is the most conspicuous part. Sometimes all visual elements in a design are collectively referred to as form, but it is more common that clearly defined shapes are taken as forms, which constitute the composition.

Designing a form can be a process separate from designing a composition, although one affects the other considerably. It is often useful to see a form first in isolation and then as an element among other elements. A designer should explore extensively the numerous options for shaping a form.

[Wong, Wucius. Principals of Two-Dimensional Design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1972.]

Principals of Two-Dimensional Design: The well-designed chair not only has a pleasing outward appearance, but stands firmly on the ground and provides adequate comfort for whoever sits on it. Furthermore, it should be safe and quite durable, able to be produced at a comparatively economic cost, packed and shipped conveniently, and, of course, it should have a specific function, whether for working, resting, dining, or other human activities.

Design is a process of purposeful visual creation. Unlike painting and sculpture, which are the realization of artists' personal visions and dreams, design fills practical needs. A piece of graphic design has to be placed before the eyes of the public and to convey a predetermined message. An industrial product has to meet consumers' requirements.

A good design, in short, is the best possible visual expression of the essence of "something," whether this be a message or a product. To do this faithfully and effectively, the designer should look for the best possible way this "something" can be shaped, made, distributed, used, and related to the environment. His creation should not only be just aesthetic but also functional, while reflecting or guiding the taste of the time.

[Wong, Wucius. Principals of Two-Dimensional Design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1972.]

[The Following is from Gombrich, E.H. The Sense of Order. A study in the psychology of decorative art. The Wrightsman Lectures deliverd under the auspices of the New York University Institute of Fine Arts. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press. 1979.]
Introduction
Usually we walk through life without paying much attention to the infinite variety of patterns and decorative motifs which we encounter all around us, on fabrics and wallpaper, on buldings and furniture, on tableware and boxes--on almost every article which is not self-consciously stylish and functional. Even this last category, as we shall see, derives some of its appeal from the absence of decoration, which we expect, or once expected, to see everywhere. To see but not to notice. For normally the decorative motifs which fill our world with such profusion are outside the focus of our attention. We take them in as background and rarely stop to analyse their intricacies. Even more rarely do we ask ourselves what it is all about and why mankind has felt this universal urge to expand vast amounts of energy on covering things with dots and scrolls, chequerboard or floral patterns . . . .

There is no tribe or culture which lacks a tradition of ornamentation. Theoretical concern with design, on the other hand, is a comparatiavely recent development and only the 20th century has witnessed the final elevation of pattern-making into the autonomous activity of 'abstract art' . . . .

My previous book Art and Illusion [1960] dealt with the emergence and perfection of representational skills in the history of painting and sculpture. It was perhaps inevitable that this interest was sometimes identified with a championship of figurative as against non-objective art, all the more as I have criticized certain theories advanced in favour of these 20th-century experiments. I do not want to deny that I was needled by the assumption that I wished to equate 'art' with 'illusion' though my critics could not possibly know that in point of fact my interest in problems of pure design goes back much fruther in my life than my interest in the psychology of illusion. It is only by hindsight that I have come to realize how closely my own fascination with the art of ornament was bound up with the history of taste in these matters.

My mother loved and collected Slovak peasant embroideries. We eagerly waited for the visits to Vienna of a Slovak trader by the name of Matonicky, who used to come to the door and unpack his splendours of embroidered wastecoats, jackets, blouses, bonnets and ribbons. My mother's means rarely extended beyond the latter two items, but we learned to admire the beauty of colours and the immense decorative tact and skill displayed in these embrodieries. I well remember wondering why such works were not esteemed as 'art' in the same way as great paintings were. I also recall hearing that these pieces were doubly precious since they could never be produced again. The tradition was rapidly fading because modern aniline dyes had replaced the natural dyes and in any case the style of life which supported these home crafts was disappearing. I could not know at that time that the nostalgic discovery of these treasures owed a good deal to William Morris and that the English periodical Studio had published at that time a volume on Peasant Art in Austria and Hungary. I believe in fact that Mr. Matonicky had been sent to my mother by a relative whose villa had been built by the progressive Czech architect Jan Kotera, who had 'discovered' him . . . .

The resemblance of this volume to Art and Illusion, both in the subtitles and in the organizationk is intendedto underline the complementary character of the two investigations, once concerned with representation,theother with pure design . . . .

The problems of this book, problems of design and decoration, would seem to lack such touchstones of success or failure. The art of ornament rose to a number of awe-inspiring summits in the Far East, in the Islamic world, in Anglo-Irish illumination and in late Gothic. There are any number of other peaks in the tribal arts of the Maoris or the American Indians of the northwest, in the Plataresque style of Spain and its Mexican derivations, in the Rococo and in certain products of Art Nouveau. They all appear to follow different roads to different goals and yet we have no difficulty in seeing their family likeness.

Such difficulties arise only when we feel obliged to offer verbal definations. It so happens that the English language is both too rich and to poor in related terms to permit such a definition. In German the term Ornament would serve quite well, and it will be seen that Victorian critics transferred this usage to England, but to most speakers of English, 'ornament' conveys some knick-knack on the mantel-piece, and to the musician a technical term for certain flourishes. The word 'design' tends to relate to technology and the term 'decoration' rather begs the question whether the practice with which I deal is simply one of adornment. There remains that jack-of-all-trades, the term 'pattern', which I shall use quite frequently though not with a very good conscience. For the word is derived form Latin pater [via patron], and was originally used for any example or model and then also for a matrix, mould or stencil. It has also become a jargon term for a type of precedent and has therefore lost any precise connotation it may have once had.

Luckily it is a mistake to think that what cannot be defined cannot be discussed. If that were so we could talk neither about life nor about art. I certainly would not venture to define the concept of order I use in the main title of this book, but I trust it will bring out the feature which interests me in decorative design. The arrangement of elements according to similarlity and difference and the enjoyment of repetition and symmetry extend from the stringing of beads to the layout of the page in front of the reader, and, of course, beyond to the rhythms of movement, speech and music, not to mention the structures of society and the systems of thought.

There was a time when it was thought that all these manifestations of the sense of order were a distinclty human prerogative. Plato said so explicitly in a passage in The Laws: 'all young creatures . . . . are perpetually breaking into disorderly cries and jumps, but whereas no other animals develops a sense of order of either kind, mankind forms a solitary exception'. One wonders whether Plato ever noticed the chirping of a cricket or the tailwagging of a dog. Be that as it may, it means no derogation from man's unique achievements to look for their roots in our biological inheritance. Thus, in considering the question of order and rhythm, I had to step even farther back than I did in studying the problem of representation. I can only hope that from such a distance the outlines do not get too blurred even though, in contradicting Plato, I have had to preface my study with biological speculations. There is a respectable precedent for seeing decorative art in this wider context. The earliest and still one of the best books on the aesthetics of design is Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty -[1753]. Brought up in the empiricist climate of the eighteenth century, Hogarth took it for granted that the student of man could appeal to the example of animals. Connecting the pleasure he found we all take in the wavy 'line of beauty' with our biological heritage, he wrote, 'This love of pursuit, merely as pursuit, is implanted in our natures, and design'd, no doubt, for necessary, and useful purposes. Animals have it evidently by instinct. The hound dislikes the game he so eagerly pursues; and even cats will risk the losing of their prey to chase it over again. It is a pleasing labour of the mind to solve the most difficult problems.'

Correct or not, I can only hope that the reader will be ready to embark on such a hunt endeavoruring to solve the most difficult problems . . . . E.H.G. London, February 1978. pp. vii-xi.

More than six years have elapsed since the writing of the Preface . . . . Such a preliminary glimpse of the whole may also spare the reader the search for something which is not there, I mean a message for our time. Writers of art books are frequently expected to be advocates of a cause. It would be missing the point of this book, however, if it were taken as propaganda for a revival of ornament in contemporary architecture and design. On the whole I even happen to share the prejeudcie of my generation in favour of functional form, but I still regret that this prejeudice has led to the elimination of decoration from the art historical curriculum. This underserved neglect is of fairly recent date. As this book shows, the rights and wrongs of ornamentation were much debated in the 18th century at the time of the Neo-classical revival, while in the 19th century the problems of the machine age raised profound issues and produced a spate of important writings. I have tried to profit from these discussions as I have from the ideas of the art historians who traced the evolution of decorative styles and motifs at the turn of the century . . . .

My purpose, to put it boldly, was one of explanation. That 'Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art' which is announced in the sub-title was to establish and test the theory proclaimed in my title, the theory that there exists a Sense of Order which manifests itself in all styles of design and which I believe to be rooted in man's bilogical heritage.

I might help some of my readers to be told even at this point in what way this hypothesis diffees from the Gestalt Theory developed in Germnay in the first decades of this century and now persuasively championed in the writings ofo Rudolf Arnheim. This theory stresses the tendency of perception towards simple form, while my interpretation of the facts [influenced by the philosophy of Karl Popper and the techniques of informtion theory] has led me to a radically different emphasis. I believe that in the struggle for existence organisms developed a sense of order not because their environment was generally orderly but rather because perception requires a framework against which to plot deviations from regularity. To anticipate the simplest example of this relationship, it is the break in the order which arouses attention and results in he elmentary visual or auditory accents which oftena ccount for the interest of decorative and musical forms . . . . E.H.G. London, June 1984.

[Gombrich, E.H. The Sense of Oder. A study in the psychology of decorative art. The Wrightsman Lectures deliverd under the auspices of the New York University Institute of Fine Arts. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press. 1979.]

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