Assignment Week Thirteen

The 'Rhino Chair', one of three pieces in Maximo Riera's 'Animal Chair Collection'.

Today’s current era of design is still heavily dependent on postmodernist techniques of reinventing the already invented. Altering entire aspects of a design to make it one’s own is often referred to as a ‘remix’ and is something found in much of contemporary art and design today. These days it is becoming increasingly harder to come up with an original design that has never been thought of by anyone else. Very often you are able to see the historical quotation or design reference in both modern day art and design. (Petty, 2011) (Woodham, 1997)

In today’s design, the addition of ornament can sometimes overtake the design, becoming more of an artistic combination of the two rather than pure design. I think that this reintroduction from the early Bauhaus days, of design becoming more about art, is something that we as designers should learn to appreciate. I think Maximo Riera is a great example of an artistic designer who takes something old and using his own unique artistic methods can create something almost completely new.

Riera’s ‘Animal Chair Collection’ is one of the most peculiar sets of designs I have ever seen. The particular design I’m looking at from this collection is his ‘Rhino Chair’. The Rococo style chair has been stripped down to its bare essentials, removing all previous colour, decoration and ornament. In preparation for Riera’s artistic additions, the chairs rococo structure becomes purely a historic quotation. Riera’s ‘Rhino Chair’ uses techniques along with the historic quotation, of ornamental eclecticism with its multiple styles and lack of simplicity, and Wit and Irony as he replaces the chairs back legs with an intricately detailed Rhinoceros sculpture. Along with all the structural changes, the entire collections colour palette is black.

While you can very clearly see the origins of the chair, Maximo Riera’s own input is much more obvious and substantial. Riera has successfully made the work his own which is what many contemporary designers I think struggle to achieve.

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Petty, M. (2011). Victoria University DSDN171 Week 13 Lecture: Post Modernism and the Remix. Victoria University School of Design and Architecture.
Woodham, J. (1997). Pop to Post-Modernism: Changing Values in Twentieth-Century Design (pp.182-203) Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Image sourced at http://smilepanic.com/wp-content/uploads/maximo-riera-rhino-chair-spire-in-me.jpg

Assignment Week Twelve

Keira Knightley and Rihanna on the cover of Vogue Magazine

Through the latter half of the 20^th century, America was quietly at war with Soviet Russia and their ideas of communism. Knowing that Russia was far ahead in terms of their nuclear weaponry, America decided to fight this ‘Cold War’ as it was called, with media, design and their ideas of an Ideological lifestyle. With their new advancements in technology and the knowledge of how to appeal to the consumer, American advertising and branding became much more about its symbolic universes and living the ideal life, not unlike today. (Petty, 2011)

In the early years of the cold war, advertising’s ideology was all about seemingly beneficial products the American family should own. (Petty, 2011) In modern years however, the ideological messages that inform design and its branding have become something much more biased and based around keep up to date with style, trends and fashion. Much of the ideology in design today, tells us what’s beautiful and what’s not, and this is accepted by the general public. From the slimness of models to the new elegance of sports cars, the most branded ideal lifestyle is only being lived by the rich and famous. An example of this ideology in branding design today is Vogue Fashion Magazine – the self-branded ‘Fashion Authority’. (Vogue, 2011)

Vogue Magazine expresses a larger ideological belief in their use of celebrities to promote the wealthy life of fame and fashion as the ideal or utopian way of living. The consumers reading the magazine want to be sucked in to a world of symbolic universes, and therefore buy the magazine despite the inappropriateness of its upper-class market to the less wealthy consumer lifestyle. As a magazine all about fashion branding, Vogue looks at what’s new in the fashion world, in terms of design and emerging styles and trends. The magazine interviews celebrity faces such as Rihanna and Keira Knightley (above) as recognisable elements to intrigue the consumer and promote the latest design innovation in fashion. Looking close at all the ever evolving aspects of Vogue, we begin to define the advertised ideal life of fortune, fame, fast cars and, fashion.

In relation to the Cold War period, these ideological lifestyles, now and back then, all seem to have common ideologies of both  ‘freedom = consumerism, freedom from want’ and happiness being the equation of Fashion + Wealth + Mobility. (Petty, 2011)

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Petty, M. (2011). Victoria University DSDN171 Week 12 Lecture: Politics of Design. Victoria University School of Design and Architecture.
Vogue Magazine Website. (2011) http://www.vogue.com/magazine/
Image One sourced at http://www.zimbio.com/Keira+Knightley/articles/SLhrMrysI0h/keira+knightley+vogue
Image Two sourced at
http://fabulousbuzz.com/2011/03/16/rihanna-in-vogue-magazines-april-2011-issue/