After thinking about writing this post during the afternoon I realised that I don't have any specific ideas for designs that I like, so I've gone into movies for ideas.
I like boxes, and I like them because they exist solely because of their function. They store things, they're square and you can tessellate them to fit into a space with absolute efficiency. Similarly, I have great respect for products which carry out their job exceptionally without any superfluous art crap. There is an elegance to the economy of NASA's spaceships and other items designed only for efficiency of use.
Even my art influences I find tend to carry some sort of realism, so that they fit in the context of what's around them and make sense physically. So, I'm offering up Syd Mead's designs in Blade Runner as my example. He managed to integrate the style of the movie (the dirty sci-fi future of Metal Hurlant comics from the 70s) into the architecture of vehicles and cities into intricate designs that made sense. As well as technical drawings detailing the internals of transport seen in the movie, he was able to construct models from these that proved that they could translate into a real-world context. These then easily translated into blueprints used by the build team for the full scale models.
Syd Mead creates beautiful landscapes and detailed structures without fluff. The lines he draws feel like they have weight to them, and are arranged in an economical way to display all relevant information.
Did I do what I was meant to do for this blog? Did I contradict myself by talking about art after my point of really economical design? Who can say.
Tom Millward
No comments:
Post a Comment