Visual Research & the Designer
Whatever the design discipline,
how important do you think it is that designer considers what has gone before, and looks for other, outside influences when designing?
Can design exist in a vacuum ?

The Past is Prologue.
No matter how original someone may think they are being, everything by default is the sum total of everything that has come before them within their own set of experiences.

Surely
an interest in geometric forms, and a mix of two materials qualify as 'visual research'?
The geometric forms have inspired the design, as has the juxtaposition of materials.
You haven't started from scratch, with nothing, you started with a couple of very clear concepts.

start somewhere
A design has to start somewhere, Robert1960, but it need not have it's origins in some previous work or influence.

'It has been said....', whats your opinion BTM?

One other thing.
You combine glass and silver but I still see the shape of a martini glass that obviously came before.

I think there might be two issues here, "pure originality", emphasis on the pure, which I think is extremely difficult to achieve. And "repurposing" or combining two disparate elements to make something new, which happens all of the time. But at the end of the day, that repurposed piece has at its core, previously designed and recognizable elements.

There is however, and this is a very big "maybe", maybe there are completely original "endeavors" like walking on the moon. Walking on the moon had never been done before but it is still the derivative act of exploration, like going to the South Pole, or climbing Everest. But unto itself, (walking on the moon) stands alone.

antecedent

it may have been koen who reminded us not long ago that to truly create "ex nihilo" [out of nothing] is an act attributed to god alone. theists will likely be inclined toward revising this proposition upon the discovery of new atomic realities completely devoid of antecedent.

that's not to say our attempts at originality or a clever use of all that exists are moot as mere illusions of creativity. to the extent that the known world has never seen or experienced a given configuration of elements, we can justifiably claim the popularly defined attribute of creativity or the fruits of innovation.

for the most part, i'm aligned with big tv guy's assumption that we cannot somehow unlearn or even distance ourselves from everything we've experienced, whether cognative or otherwise. therefore our so-called creations will contain breadcrumbs back to something rather than to nothing.

i usually think along these lines when observing the other-worldly space creatures of our sci-fi film makers. as wildly bizarre some of them can be--say, for instance, those of the star wars movies--one can typically see references to components, elements or features in the real world.

again, this is not at all to speak in critical or disparaging terms regarding the efforts or results of the designers; their work is inarguably characterized by amazing insight, wit, intelligence, etc. nonetheless, it does effectively define the parameters of our design activity and contributes toward an appropriate view of ourselves and our accomplishments.

GOD
Robert1960, I am referring to the first part of your question when talking about the glass/silver. The second part is obvious; nobody 'lives in a vacuum'.
I think that originality has to be taken in context. Of course none of us can claim to work in a vacuum. To design is to use acquired skills, learned, most often at college or university but sometimes self-taught. In doing so you cannot be unaware of what has gone before.

BTM, the martini glass may have come before but it was not the inspiration behind the glass. Because I came up with a conical shape is co-incidental and was part of the development stage that inspired me to use this shape. It was one of the geometric shapes I used as it can contain a liquid. In another drinking vessel I used a cylinder as the container plus a square. A cylinder is probably the most common form used in drinking vessels and it is a logical one to use, but that is not why I chose it. It was one of the shapes in the pallet I was using.
People will always be able to find something to compare your design to and will often do so disparagingly.
Original design is not about inventing new things but about creating new shapes for existing things. Plagiarism is the opposite to this, taking existing designs and tweaking them to appear to be your own or using an existing design as a starting point. Many designers will follow trends that are fashionable at the time which is certainly 'looking to others' for inspiration.

But designing can be very hard work unless you are Monsieur Starck who claims it takes him 10 minutes.
Harder yet than comming up with a concept is getting the detailing right. Many contemporary designs, particularly those since the Post Modern movement, lack attention to detail. Superficially they look great. Jorge pensi's Toledo chair - a favourite of mine - never-the-less misses something with its tubular legs that don't flow with the aluminium castings of the seat and back.
On the other hand, Eames's EA105 is perfect in avery way. That is probably why it is so highly regarded and enduring.
I think the word "original" is taken too literally. It should be replaced by "integrity" or "unique".

KDC, I think God, if he exists, would not be concerned with the frivolity of design, fashion and consumerism, but he did give us the ability to appreciate beauty - and to destroy!

It would be interesting to see the work of some of you designers out there. Be brave, open yourself to criticism!

teapot
Heath, the glass/silver vessel is a liqueur glass. I made several, kept one and sold the rest.
The reference to Marianne Brandt is astute! If you saw a teapot I made way back you could be forgiven if you though I had plagiarized her teapot design! Mine uses a hemi-sphere too! But if you looked at the number of drawings I did to get to the final design you would see that it was not derived from her teapot at all. I filled a whole A2 detail paper pad and more to get there. It was a real struggle.
But what do you mean "in the craft tradition"? Yes, it is hand made but does that take it out of the designer field?
I feel differently to you about the "things that serve me". I have a pair of champagne flutes and red wine glasses that I bought in the late 70s, Dartington glass. They are beautiful and absolutely fantastic to drink from. My wife and I use them occasionally.

I am not going...
....to state again what seems evident to me : That nobody lives in a vacuum. But I like the analogy with the astronaut. The reason why he or she can survive in a vacuum is that the lucky person in question is packed inside an envelop that prevents the body and probably the mind from expanding way beyond what the skin can contain, in other words, explode. Maybe similar constraints keep our creativity from exploding. Limits in what is technically possible, limits in what is safe, limits in what is functional and works, etc. seem to have a similar effect
It would be interesting to analyse a number of products and find out to what extend they appear more creative because they neglected minor or more substantial parts of these constraints. Generally speaking a substantial part of the most visible production in design, meaning the most exposed design by the media, certainly meets those criteria. They show either disregard for function or for feasibility, for basic safety, real environmental concerns etc. and in doing so they push other limits.
What seems to be missing in this discussion is the distinction between different elements of a product. Although it seems likely that there are many components in any given product that are based on previously found solutions, it does not exclude a creative element. By the way it is quite unlikely that I would refer to creativity as something that belongs to the exclusive job description of a god?.I did say however that creating is indeed making something out of nothing. Making is most likely the wrong word for something that has not materialized yet, but in this case it refers to generating a new yet abstract idea. In most good design there is something of that nature but it never applies to the whole product. I think it would serve the discussion if that distinction was made. It would also serve designers if they would more clearly acknowledge that there is always a large part of the product that was already there prior to their own intervention. I also think that it would serve the discussions about the quality of a design if the distinction was made between all the already known elements and the new or creative ones.

Yes but a well crafted wooden window
can be a thing of beauty. If properly maintained they can last for hundreds of years, evidenced by my parents 200 plus year old home in CT. And they can be repaired and maintained with common wood working tools.

That said, the aluminum windows can definitely be viewed as an improvement over the wood as the wood was an improvement over an oiled parchment covering on an opening in the side of a hut.

Maybe I can do this
If I am doing this well you should see two pictures of the glass technology that heath describes

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amazing photograph, they look so light + thin.

I can't remember who said it, I think it was Philip Jonhson, he was once refering to a FLW building or maybe it was Kahns Salk institute, he said that the architect had that form in his mind long before ever confronted with the commision and it was just waiting to be born and had little to do with the program, it was adapted.

Who really knows how the creative mind works? I did some quick googling on neuroscience but could only find this.

For a few years I've been fascinated with vintage car steering wheels, they are quite beautiful and that form does float around in my grey matter and if you look at the rim of the seat in my stool on the other thread you can see it there.

I think it helps to look outside of the design world, microbiology, physiology, geology and forget about Eames for a while. There is more wealth in the wider world then we'll ever see between the pages of a magazine.
http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Brain-Neuroscience-Genius/dp8...

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So would you say Koen that the first requirment of the designer is the ability to identify problems or defincies? Thats a very dry way of putting it but if thats true doesn't that render much of the spectacular young Dutch and similar design redundant?

I have a friend who recently completed her masters and is now doing her phd in anthroplogy, she is frustrated that her supervisor won't recognise primary research and is only interested in an argument built from secondary sources, I think we are harvesting the fruit of 30 years of instant gratifcation and soundbites in a few fields.

I am a little surprised by the diversity of responses...
but that only means that I had not thought about this before.

As I was trained as a feasibility analyst, I am inclined to address this discussion in a framework of feasibility.

To me, design consists of a designer, a problem, a context and a solution. There is also a legacy of related design solutions and failures, whether viewed as wholes or in components, some epistemic software called aesthetics, some other epistemic software called societal values and zeitgeist the designer is aware of consciously, or unconsciously, and for paid designers, anyway, there is also a client.

It seems almost self-evident to me that a design can be practiced in a vacuum, at least if one chooses to do so, or alternatively, in as richly interactive a process as one wishes to take the time to contrive and tolerate.

A designer, even a consumately well trained and educated one, CAN choose to ignore the legacy of prior design and skills and strike out anew. I can attempt to glue metal and plastic with water, it just may not work.

At the extreme, a designer can do what I would call auto-design, sort of the design equivalent of auto-eroticism. He can reject solutions that have come before. He can reject problems that have come before. He can redefine the problem into an imaginary one and do the same with contexts (note: many meetings with developers and architects made me feel that this was exactly what they had done). He can even pretend to be whomever, or whatever he wishes. He can pretend not even to be a designer in any meaningful sense of the word. He can, for example, be to designers, what Jeff Koons has tried to be to artists. He can fantasize a metaphysical context that does not really exist. He can abandon his training and use primitive thoughts, or take drugs and use hallucinations (again, some developers and architects I worked with almost seemed to do this), or use only skills he has not mastered. He can Dada, if you will. He can make up his own metaphysical problem. He can generate a metaphysical solution that fits nothing but his own metaphysical contrivances in other ways. He could, in this auto-designing, even, I suppose, redefine design as aspiring to failures, rather than solutions (it would take some chutzpah, but again, recall Jeff Koons, or Dadaists). I suppose that in a metaphysical world, the designer's purpose could even be not to act at all. The mind is quite capable of all of the above. The mind can even create a rule rejecting most if not all unconscious patterns and archetypal effects by hiring consulting designers with the objectivity to point them out so he can then remove them. Clients and fees might be rare, but it is mentally and in some respects anyway, technically feasible.

design forum
It is amazing that the off topic, Sarah Palin thread gets 1177 viewings on a design forum and this thread gets only 495 viewings and 7 contributors!

Borderline between inspiration and copy.
The danger with inspiration is to be tempted to cross the borderline between inspiration and copy.

Can be inspired or research "near" the final product or "very far".

The more near we start, the easier will be to finish, but more near to be a copy.

And then, the more far we start, the more difficult will be to finish, but more far from a copy, and more "original" will be.

"Visual research"

Is "visual" the best word? As inspiration, will be more near a copy.

What about "ideas research", or others.

cont.
When I say real people, I mean everybody, and I also include that Heath's secretary friend that needed to spended 3 salaries in a CHCHCHC bag, and why not that poor millionaire with other problems to solve.

A good translation, for americans can be the some of 30reasons.org specially:
http://www.30reasons.org/index.php?p=archive&id=9

Bad translations:
A nice example of a bad object following that rule is the gun-lamp by Starck.
I imagine this as a translation form a translation from translation. As a third translation. Let's say "over-translated".

I think that's a bad design following the rule "always the best execution" over concept.

Because another problem with "concept over execution" is that to me, that most of the times, there is no concept.

I would prefer more the concept over the execution. The execution can always be improved.
The concept not. If you don,t start with a concept , you will never have!

I like those a bit "unfinished" designs, when the final user may (in their mind) finish it at their own taste. etc.

* Big companies don,t want to be out and make serial defective series.

* Which role plays in this "research" the trends?

* Personally I don't consider a first issue not the originality nor the beauty, it's OK as way but not as an end itself.

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I think maybe 'visual' was not quite the right choice of words to kick the thread off.

Materials research, historical research...much more important and when we say 'research' that means a lot more work than looking at a few websites or a couple of books.

You know, I don't think you...
You know, I don't think you want to equate number of responses/views with the quality of a given post - although such is part and parcel of consumer mentality, obviously.

Not a small portion of much of the problem here is the conflation we bring to the term "designer". Everyone can - in the age of American Idol - be a designer.

Which will lead us, then, to next year's hit TV show. Dancing with the Designers. Yes, it has a very nice and appropriately empty Jethro kind of ring to it. Feed the beast.

Y'all come back now, ya hear? Or at least tune in.

I
would say every part of the designer shapes their designs..

I don't know of any blind designers, but have heard of a blind photgrapher, and many colour blind designers.