My thesis stemmed from the need of a structured lexicon dedicated to the training of design students. When we are asked what Design is, we often resort to various concepts and content associations - aesthetics, function, etc. It seems that the word is often idealised through many terms frequently inflated by everyday use.
The challenge was to turn the big design concepts into 20 selected words and 20 graphics and quotes, creating a pocket glossary (12x12 cm) useful for new design students in order to facilitate their approach to the discipline. Sometimes simplicity, practicality and images are more effective than many books put together.
The project is a thorough but simplified research of meaning intended not only for the description and explanation of common concepts through the Design lens, but also for inspiring further thoughts and application of said concepts. As Georges Bataille, French philosopher, writes, 'A dictionary is that when it no longer provides the meaning of words, but their function'. It's meant to be an interpretive tool that has a didactic and cognitive purpose, as it contextualises different design aspects while strengthening the critical consciousness necessary for young designers who at times might overlook the meaning and use of proper language.
I have picked one word for each letter of the italian alphabet, and for each of those I gave voice to a designer or a thinker, to represent some of the guiding principles of design: from the Bauhaus theory of Walter Gropius to the 'techne' of Aristotle; from Charles Baudelaire's thoughts to Picasso's observations; from the mathematical logic of Henri Poincare to the experience of Buckminster Fuller, and so on.
The end goal was clarity, hence the chosen style had to be minimalist. This preference led to the subsequent associative approach: the theme is the design world, therefore it's the design itself to act as a visual caption to its content. The above objects, among the most emblematic and popular, are the protagonists of each page alongside the word described.
― inspirational graphics from the past
For the graphic style I let my times to dictate my choice. Like in any era, some of the new generation trends end up having a nostalgic feel to them, and recently people are looking back precisely to the years in which those iconic objects were created. Being the passion for the 'vintage', or the craze for the Instagram smartphone application which at its very start made your photos look like Polaroids - what's 'retro' and 'cool' will always be sought after by the younger generations.
― from my glossary, the two spreads introducing the letter B as in 'Beauty'
What is Beauty and how a designer has to take it into account? Is it just aesthetics or also function? To exemplify it I used the Fiat 500, a design masterpiece that everyone still loves these days and a quote from Baudelaire: "All forms of beauty, like all possible phenomena, contain an element of the eternal and an element of the transitory, of the absolute and of the particular".
I explored in a similar way 19 more concepts: analysis, creativity, decoration, aesthetic experience, taste, form, idea, language, material, nature, object, problem, quantity and quality, rule, synthesis, technique, mankind, variety and, finally, zero.
― mockup of my graduation panel (100x70cm), presenting the 20 concepts.
