Amy Watkins

Critical Report Presentation

Aesthetics In Design

Aesthetics is heavily connected to philosophy in design, and concentrates on many perspectives within a design concept. The term aesthetics derives from the ancient Greek word aisthanomai.

Factors that influence aesthetics;

- Culture

- Social Status

- Location

- Upbringing

- Experiences

Mads Nygaard Folkmann - Evaluating Aesthetics in Design: A Phenomenological Approach

- Key aspect of the communication of design

- Especially in a ‘non-professional’ manner

- ‘Emotional’ connection to design due to it ﾕ s non-functional meaning

- Aesthetic quality is linked to personal attachment and desire, rather than purpose and procedure

How we are effected aesthetically depends entirely on how we live. Our role in society will reflect our tastes and desires within design, and how we want to be perceived will be represented by what we find aesthetically pleasing, and what we rely on for functionality, as aesthetics are controlled by our senses, how we approach objects and products is related to our status and lifestyle.

Aesthetics over Practicality

- In our current climate aesthetics have overtaken practicality

- Quality becomes the least important part of the design of the product, resulting in products that please our senses, but lack purpose and efficiency

- A product can be so functional that its design aesthetic becomes completely unnoticed.

Aesthetics and Our Senses

- The whole concept of aesthetics in design is the natural appeal to our senses

- An object must have a positive reaction with our senses in order for us to engage and find it aesthetically pleasing

- Our personal experiences will shape our senses and emotions, thus directly affecting our feelings towards aesthetics

“If we wish to discern whether anything is beautiful or not, we do not refer the representation of it to the object by means of understanding sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable character: and the joint verdict of such, wherever they are to be found, is the true standard of taste and beauty.”

(Hume, 1965)

Gernot Bohme

- Ambience

- How items in our surroundings affect and appeal to us

- Relates ambience as a relationship between subject and object, but ambience can only unfold if we are experiencing the subject

- Having a direct experience allows us to perceive an object in a certain way, that will influence how we find things aesthetically

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)

-Theories have been more associated to feelings and experiences

- We respond to an objects appearance without concept or knowledge, purely due to aesthetics and our experiences

- Kant believes that taste is merely our own common sense, and that without our own sense of taste we would not be able to judge other cognitive sources

- Without taste we would not be able to judge experiences.

David Hume (1711 - 1776)

- Relates beauty with the pleasure caused by the object

- Sentimental values only exist in the mind

- Encourages the idea of common sense, that we naturally relate and know a positive or negative feeling

- Also suggests that there are several circumstances that will always determine a solid outcome on taste. These are natural and unavoidable due to factors like age and culture.

Conclusion

- Aesthetics do play a key role in design, although they are not formally presented when assessing objects or products

- How we view, judge and enjoy an object relies entirely on our own view of aesthetics

- Varies depending on our culture, age, religion etc.

- Whether or not a product can be both aesthetically pleasing and functional simultaneously depends entirely on our own lifestyle and social status

- Our own senses and tastes revert back to our own understanding and experiences we have obtained with similar products, colours etc.