The Designed World

Look around you.  Every single thing you see, from pens, to desks, to telephones, to scissors and tubes of handcream, has been designed by a person or a group of people.  It’s fitting during NYC Fashion Week to recognize that not just our clothing, but everything we sit on or at, or use or even touch, is the result of someone’s creative thinking.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/02/09/384924292/from-soy-sauce-to-bullet-trains-famed-japanese-designer-dies-at-85

kikkoman btl

I don’t know about you, but I’ve used that soy sauce bottle an awful lot, and never given its designer a second thought.  It would be seriously cool to have had that kind of creative impact on the world around us, though, wouldn’t it?

 

 

Here’s another designer whose work is familiar:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1367481/Apples-Jonathan-Ive-How-did-British-polytechnic-graduate-design-genius.html

London Fashion Week S/S 2013 - Burberry Prorsum arrivals

 

Not surprisingly, we in the library have a lot of information on designers and inspiration for designers.  We’re in the business of trying to inspire YOU, in fact.  And teach you some history of your craft while we’re at it.

 

 

One big designed space that many of you are learning about right now is that of the American home.  Many of you are currently working on this project for HP 231.  You may not know that we’ve set up a Library Guide to help you with this project:

http://fitnyc.libguides.com/americahome

split level p-141In the Lib Guide, url listed above, there are a lot of websites that have information to help you research this project.  This website contains hundreds of scans of building company catalogs, sample homes, and floorplans.  Just be sure to only use ones where the original diagrams or drawings that have printed dates.  (This makes it a documented primary source.)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/42353480@N02/sets/72157622229110201/

In case you are wondering what makes a good source vs. a bad source, we’ve written a Lib Guide on that, too…

http://fitnyc.libguides.com/start

 

If you’re researching industrial designers (those folks who design the things around us) there are a lot of really interesting lists and articles on the web.   Here are a couple, for example:

http://www.creativebloq.com/design/20-industrial-designers-follow-behance-1012886

http://www.snap2objects.com/2009/05/70-designers-that-shaped-the-worl

But in the library, we also have a lot of good books on the history of design.

conversations book cvr

 

This author of this book interviews all kinds of designers.

Conversations: Up Close and Personal with Icons of Fashion, Interior Design, and Art,  by Blue Carreon.

5th Floor, Main Stacks TT515 .C37 2014

 

 

modern world design

 

Industrial design is a relatively new name and new profession for something people have done for thousands of years.  But events like the World’s Fairs have helped make these tasks into prominent professions.

Inventing the Modern World: Decorative Arts at the World’s Fairs, 1851-1939, by Regina Lee Blaszczyk, et al.

5th Floor, Main Stacks NK775 .F88

 

 

These are only a few of the many books we have in the library to help you find out more about the people who designed the world around you.  Check out more in StyleCat, using search words like:

Decorative Arts – History

Fashion

Interior Design

Art

Exhibitions

And good luck with your spring-semester projects!