I came across an interesting idea today, I’m going to synthesize a bit, but it’s based on a lecture by Dieter Rams (who is deserving of his own article, and most likely will have one in the near future). Basically, the idea is that the goal of the designer should never be outstanding design. There is no such thing as outstanding design, it’s just an abstraction that is entirely unattainable. The goal is simply better design, better than what currently exists in some way. It could be easier to use, it could be more structured, or more aesthetic, but none of these things are outstanding, they are simple improvements.

I’m making the switch up to WordPress 3.0 to manage this thing. I imagine there will be some downtime, and things may not work the same when it comes up. Please bear with me, It’ll be back up as soon as I can!

Ok, so this post is going to cover quite a bit of ground, so I hope to be clear, but please just let me know if I didn’t explain something clearly. That being said, let’s dig in.

The definition of a shape is “the outline of a thing; a contour; that can be made by value, line, texture or color, and may be suggested or implied.” So what does that mean? Basically, just as a line is a point for a walk, a shape is a line for a walk. Whereas line defines direction and length, shape defines actual space (in 2 dimensions).

(**MINOR WARNING: This post contains what some might consider to be adult content. Though these are classical master works of art, I felt obligated to put this up. The pieces in question are Titian’s Venus of Urbino, and Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, both depicting nude women. Thank you!**)

As was explored in my previous post (sorry for the delay, by the way), line is an extremely important part of any modern graphic designer’s repertoire. The line, however, is not a new invention. Ever since the renaissance, the utilization of line to determine subject, proportion, and space has been imperative.

The most fundamental form which can be expressed is the line. The best definition that I’ve heard for how to describe the line is from the great painter Paul Klee who wrote, “a line is a point out for a walk.” A point is a term used in art to refer to a specific location in space which has no length, width, or breadth, and is useful only in concept for indicating a place within a piece. The natural progression of the point is the line which would form if you were to trace a point as it moved. Now it is important to say here that the line is purely abstract, there is no such thing as line in nature, there is nothing that you can find which has no width or breadth, but only width. The abstraction of the line, however, is convenient for the artist to be able to talk about the rest of a piece. Now enough philosophy, on to the practical.

Welcome to The New Aesthetic.  I’m a rather eclectic person and I created this blog to do a couple of things. First, I want to share the things that inspire me. Second, I wanted to take a new approach to education in design. I’ve been through many of the well regarded sites that exist online for teaching design and the tools to do it. The majority of sites take the approach: “here is the way to achieve this effect in this program.” The direct nature of this approach is fantastic if you are trying to do what is being done, and I have a lot of respect for the people producing those works. That being said, the problem that is rarely addressed in the the standard blogroll is the ‘why’.