Authentic Designs

Maxim Soldatkin has been in design since 2007. Graduate of the British Higher School of Art and Design, Yandex, courses of the Gorbunov Bureau. Projects for Coca-Cola, Yandex, Alfa-Bank. He visited 40 countries, lived in Asia for a year and a half. The recently popular "flat" interface style is not just a fashionable trend. It is about striving to create a more authentic design, eliminate the excess of visual elements, and filter out unnecessary and fictitious elements. In the pursuit of creating new opportunities, technological progress sometimes leads to redundancy in certain areas. In the 19th century, for example, mechanized mass production technology made it possible to print ornaments quickly and inexpensively, leading to an oversupply of richly decorated goods on the market. Something similar has happened in recent years, when existing design technologies allowed for the creation of visually rich interfaces. This, in turn, led to an overabundance of styles and elements of skeuomorphism. Striving for originality, the Art Nouvea Authentic Designs u movement curbed the excesses of ornamentation inherent in the 19th century, adapting design to the age of mass production. Today we see the same drive for originality in flat design trends that reject skeuomorphism and overuse of visual elements and favor simple, clean, content-centric design. Authentic design. In 1908, Adolf Loos, an influential Austrian architect, wrote an essay with the provocative title Ornament and Crime. He exclaims that “the creator of modern ornaments is either a laggard or a sick person. After three years, he himself will be forced to renounce his creation. From the moment of their creation, his works are unbearable for a cultured person and very soon will become such for others. " Loos even boldly stated: “The lower the standards people have, the richer their ornaments will be. Humanity should strive to see beauty in the form of an object, and not to endow it with unnecessary ornaments. " What led to such a dislike for ornaments? To understand the mindset of this forefather of modern design, we must first have some understanding of the state of design at the end of the 19th century. The invention of the steam engine ushered in the era of mechanized mass production. As Frank Whitford writes: “Machine tools with a steam engine could print, cut and model almost any matter faster and more accurately than if it were done by hand by a human. Mechanized production meant lower costs and higher incomes. " But, despite the transition from manual to mechanized production, the style of goods has not changed. Most of the products, from buildings and furniture to textiles and cutlery, were decorated with an abundance of different designs inspired by the great Renaissance era. By the way, I recommend looking right now: An inkwell displayed at The Great Exhibition in 1851. When creating it, an excessive number of ornaments were used, but at the same time non-standard. Over time, decorating goods by hand has become an expensive pleasure and has become a symbol of wealth and luxury. With the advent of the era of mechanization, it became possible to quickly and inexpensively create fakes of popular ornaments. Rather than pondering what design would be best suited for a particular mass-produced product, manufacturers rushed to copy the styles that had developed historically, spending a minimum of money on it. As a result, the market was flooded with tasteless, low-quality goods, which Adolph Loos, along with other progenitors of modern design, opposed. In his book, The Decorative Art of Today, renowned architect Le Corbusier openly declared the lavish decoration of all kinds of trash. He argued that “a luxurious thing is made skillfully, neatly and without any admixtures, and its nakedness only reveals its quality. It was the development of industry that led to the status quo: a cast iron stove overflowing with decoration elements costs less than a simple one; a growing number of imperfections cannot be noticed in the casting process. " Influential critic and journalist Montgomery Schuyler condemned the ornate 19th-century facades, stating: “If you scrub the main walls of all the buildings on this street, all architecture will simply disappear. Buildings will become the most common. " The modern Harrods department store building was completed in 1905. This building was designed by architect Charles William Stephens. The façades are typical of Victorian architecture (photo by Mic https://jiji.ug/kampala/clothing/authentic-designs-7opmHN46aJPz1Jnd4ERWO1BA.html