The Aesthetics Imperative: From Grey Jumpsuits to Blinging USB’s
Saturday, July 26th, 2008
Posted by Nadia Nascimento
* This blog post is part of Invoke’s participation in the 2008 Vancouver Blogathon for Charity
I imagined conformist grey jumpsuits, feasts comprised of small yellow pills and cars hovering in bleak uniformity. Utilitarian high rises. Breaking forth of hydrogen eggs. Maybe Big Brother was to blame for my perspective on the future, but it was really nothing short of a natural perspective after being inundated with new media projections on what Orwellian future was to come.
But my future now is to the contrary: we have moved into the enticement of shiny 2.0 icons, photo images, and bio in prose, color wheels and PPT with Radiohead as our uncompromised soundtrack. We want our desks to be our glory and customized coffee our pagoda. Personalized dog collars, phones that sparkle, USB’s that reflect our personality. We have come to be much more tangible than I had once imagined. We are more tangible than we are real. We are aesthetic addicts and we are judging you.
Every moment we are sending out messages of what our momentary truisms are. False or not, they exist. What makes us most aware of this fact, is how this image is a stain. Unlike the blending of the grey suits and the uniform passing of time, we are now waging to not only advance but to also accelerate our ‘own-ness’. And this is what makes us fight the grey suit: “Design, according to David Brown, the former President of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, “is moving from the abstract from the ideological : this is good design - to the personal and emotional: I like that.” Aesthetics are now communication. They are pleasure. And we demand it.
So, font whores, find comfort in the fact that you are not alone, that you are by nature deep biological nature, just visual, tactile creatures (so says David Browne in that we are able to have just as much nature as we are to have the other ability to speak our reason. We don’t just see pretty thing. We like them. And we will fight for them. So find what pleases you, and run with it. Design and aesthetics are an amazing way for us to share who we are and get to the bottom of things. So feel reassured that thinking apple icons are hot is normal. And if anything, it is encouraged.
