THE FUTURE OF HANDMADE DESIGN:
- mass-produced, machine-made and digitally crafted works have ceded some ground to the imperfect, tactile and subjective qualities of the handmade, and we have found ways to intervene by hand in the more alienating aspects of technology.
- creatively, we have reached something of a watershed. This return to humanistic and tactile sensibilities - a partial reversal of modernism's sterility and machine-made aesthetic - sits alongside a new wave of technology that places control and ingenuity back in the hands of the individual.
- the movement is related to a shift in design practices in response to changes in consumer demand.
- Stefan Sagmeister: "with the advent of modernism, everything became machine-made, be it in architecture, products of graphics. This made a lot of sense in the 1920's when there was a need to get rid of ornamentation in order to reflect the cultural climate. As this machine-made 'objective' direction has now been the status quo for almost 100 years, a more human, handmade, subjective, natural approach is the more effective way to communicate".
- the digitalisation of design revolutionised graphics in the 90's and has since given rise to an endless proliferation of new fonts, some of which attempt to mimic handwriting. Meanwhile, the practice of writing by hand in everyday life has become scarce, with typing taking place of pen and paper.
- digital degeneration.
- Dutch lettering artist, Job Walters, laments the decline of traditional practices in self-expression.
- "in a world where manual craft is supplanted more and more by digital technique, I find the universal and physical nature of handwriting fascinating. Most people acquire their penmanship in their early youth, but do not practice it until much later in life; the hand degenerates". So too has the digitalisation of the design process affected its aesthetic development - to empowering effect, but also detriment of character.
- Aslak Gurholt Rosen of Norwegian design studio Yokoland - any form of handmade process leads to a unique understanding of the design process. "Today, I spend most of my day in front of a screen. To do things by hand - drawing, painting, making a sculpture, or even constructing a piece of furniture - gives you an understanding of form, size, construction and colour, which is essential in design. Ultimately, how can you design anything without knowing how it's produced?"
- ceding a degree of control over the end product is part of what enables handmade processes to reach their full potential.
- what emerges is that design practitioners are forging new ways to integrate manual and digital methods, using them at different stages of the design process, with one informing the other.
- Sam Winston - to circumvent the homogenising influence of the computer. "Even though a machine can create many things, the point of input is always the same, so a an experience goes, it can be very limited".
- as our lives become increasingly digitalised, and we consume more images on-screen, the presence of handmade elements in a digital context brings the content back into our 'real' world and our tactile experiences.
- what takes months of planning and building by hand could be achieved in minutes on a computer, but the final image would lack integrity.
- there is a sense of honesty in the handmade process that can be absent in design created mechanically. Handmade elements set up a relationship with the viewer based on trust and shared experiences. Imperfections are natural, human and signifiers of a narrative that discloses how an object has been made.
- Illenberger: "I think that working by hand contributes to the proximity between the work and its audience".
- if human touch is absent from products, consumers are intervening to customise and 'hack' mass-manufactured items into something more personal that genuinely answers their needs.
- "when this ethos is applied to our relationship with design, it has a more fundamental charge - a return to design as a direct response to real problems faced by real people".
- Anthony Burrill - it isn't about peddling nostalgia or making things look old. "That's something I'm very conscious of. Just because I'm making something using old techniques - I still want it to feel contemporary".
- the open source movement.
- while digital-aided design can create cheats and illusions, there is no substitute for the quality of the end product and the satisfaction in the making of a well-executed piece of handmade work. Likewise, the shortcuts implemented by machine-made production can be reversed by consumers' interventions by hand.
- the future of handmade is not simply about an aesthetic or a set of tools or practices, then, but a system of beliefs, or an ethic about ways of working that upholds quality, craftmanship and innovation. The handmade design is bound up with wider cultural changes relating to consumption.
- fundamentally, we are rediscovering our hands as tools, making us active participants in designing the future.
https://www.creativebloq.com/future-handmade-design-5132895
(Accessed 13 September 2018).
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