My last post may have been about the practicality of design, but it wasn’t meant to deny the importance of frivolousness. When I think of design under the life umbrella of “school” or of “working,” I tend to enter this serious mindset and sometimes miss out on the tongue in cheek, clever, and totally unnecessary items designers of all disciplines (fashion, industrial, graphic, architecture, etc) create out of love. I picked up a book from the Richardson Library called “Design Play: an array of quirky design” that inspired the ideas I’m developing for capstone. There are a variety of media, attitudes, and references depicted across the pages, but the drawing power of novelty through an unexpected location, topic, material, etc. made everything in this book a Eureka Moment.
It reminded me about the importance of fun in design, for the designer AND the audience. People develop emotional connections to playful design. This fact is often examined in a negative light – how advertisers woo young children into brand loyalty through character design, for example – but it’s rarely celebrated openly (especially since the recession put frugality back into fashion). There’s something to be said for the kind of materialism that makes a house a home, or a shirt a favorite shirt.
