Running head: Values of Design

Cultural Value and Its Future Design

Jiwoo Seo
University of Kentucky

VALUES OF DESIGN

Abstract
Cultural values of design are studied in this paper with the explanation of sub-cultures such
as fashion, interior, and graphic design. No matter what type of designer you are every design
must consider form and function and different designers have their own values. Forms are
related to aesthetic beauty which makes colors fundamental to the form of design. Two
images embedded within paper are used to represent the examples of the values of design.
Becoming a member of design culture and leaving the design culture are quite easy to do
because all you need is to design to become a member and stop designing to leave this culture.
Even though there will be limited natural resources in the future that would be required in
fashion design, there will other substitution that will be invented replace the natural resources.
But other than those limited resources, future will hold a whole new level of innovations.

VALUES OF DESIGN

Cultural Value and Its Future Design

Design constitutes various kinds of branches but it all narrows down to one
fundamental culture that has a belief and concept. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary
the definition of design is to create, fashion, execute, or construct according to plan. From
fashion to architecture, all requires design as the baseline for the next step and are built on the
base design. Design could also be seen as colors, like matching different colors and using
different shapes and its orientations. Design is a unique in its own way that it can hold
varieties of meaning and still be a one culture. Despite of all varieties in design, it is very
easy to become a member and leave design culture. Moreover, the values of design culture
may differ from sub-culture but in general all comes down to one fundamental value. In the
future, design will hold unimaginative new innovations.
It is very simple to be a member of design culture. If you can design thats only one
requirement that it ask for to be a part of the design culture member. Some may go into
professional school graduate with a fine arts degree in both undergraduate and graduate
school and work as a licensed designer but they are not necessarily all called designers. Even
if people get trained for years design is simply not the subject that you can master by
studying. People have to have the required skill set to become real designers. For others they
may not have gone to school and never studied design but they could have the skill set that
makes them able to design using varieties of material. Design is one specific culture that
needs the aptitude in thinking creative ways.

Lauren a student who is majoring in interior

architecture mentions that one of the most important skills in the design field is to master a
free hand drawing because in her study field drawing takes a major part of designing
(personal communication September 21 2014).
People could leave anytime whenever they want to. Design culture is really a matter
of whether you are designing or not. People can always take a break from design because not

VALUES OF DESIGN

all people can create new designs every day or frequently. People also could use the ability of
design to start a different business. There are so many fields that people could go into with
designs. So even if you are not coming up with ideas you can always be embedded in design
culture doing other works. Professor Lucas is a professor of design and creativity class. He
has a PhD in design history and yet he is not designing every moment of his life but rather he
uses design to teach students how design could affect you in your life. He uses design but not
designing, which could be considered as being in a design field.

So when people leave the

design culture, they must be entirely out of doing design and using a design. Design is in
every aspect of peoples life and as long as people are associated with the design they are still
considered as practicing design.
Regardless of type of designers their main value and belief comes down to form and
function. All designers have to think what purpose their design serves but at the same time
they have to consider how it looks. When designers design their forms it include various
colors and orientations. How could orange color match with green color? How these colors
could be transformed in a way that could light up peoples heart. Designers constantly seek
for the colors that make people feel comfortable, welcomed, relaxed, and happy. When
people find happiness through design it gives designers motivation to continue on with their
career and continues to strive for the better and best design that they could possibly create.
Professor Lucas had mentioned that he sees the design world as eclectic; he sees design as
mixture of everything and embraces the variety of objects (personal communication
September 21 2014). His viewpoint comes from the efforts of designers to use every source
to fabricate every design that they could to give joy to people. Forms are related to aesthetics
like the look and feel of an object. Colors are the basic starting line of design and the
materials that they use to create their design to two, three- dimensional form. Different
orientations of colors reflect different impression on objects and humans. Burghart says, the

VALUES OF DESIGN

appearance of the person significantly influences the estimation of unknown features (2012).
This sentence is taken as the main theme for some designers that they do not care what the
functions is long as it looks good. For fashion designers, their clothes at runways are not
made of smooth silk or cotton, most of the time its made out of very stiff materials that you
would never expect as a usual material of clothes. Fashion designers make their clothes in
such a different way because they have a specific form that they want to show. Some other
designers also not care at all about the function; the only thing that matters is the form or the
aesthetic beauty. Architects may design a building that looks great outside but the function
may not be what people expected. One of the examples is a building called Dongdaemun
Design Plaza in Seoul, South Korea the building is built to become a landmark in Korea and
the space-look appearance catches peoples eyes but appearance does not tell us the main
function.

Figure 1. The entire building of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul, Korea looks fantasti

VALUES OF DESIGN

c and resembles a spaceship. Note. Photo Marco Rinaldi Phtography.

Figure 2. Spaces under Dongdaemun Design Plaza have huge empty spaces. Note.
Photo Corbis Images.
This building looks fantastic outside and fascinates many tourists but does
not serve a good function as a building. Some critics criticized that DDP will become a huge,
hollow shell (Chang, 2014). This architecture design truly shows that the designer of this
architecture had definitely put more focus in its appearance than its function. These aesthetic
of different colors and its shape then influences emotions and feeling of humans. The
aesthetics that uses different colors affect people differently like bright colors such as red and
orange give the impression of vividness and liveliness and green and blue colors brings peace
and dark colors like gray and black looks very gloomy. Mithra says that color green is used
in most hospitals to ease nerves and attenuate harsh emotions (2012). Scientific studies have
done that most people agreed that room with blue and green colors are relaxing and
harmonious. In addition, recent research has shown that when patients are exposed to the
green room their heart rate drops, blood pressure lowers and muscles relax. But when they
are introduced to hot color like red those values tend to rise. (2014). As Mithra mentioned

VALUES OF DESIGN

that colors affect mood and feeling Ossmannan interior designer states the similar idea.
Color creates a mood, and if you dont have the right mood, your home can look chaotic and
uncomfortable (2013). This sums the significance of the fundamental uses of colors in
aesthetic.
In fact nature is one of the greatest examples to represent the combinations of colors
that soothes for humans. The colors of trees and leaves colored in bright green during
summer and changes color as the season passes; same with sunsets and the deep-blue ocean
that it gives people joy and refreshes our mind just by looking at it. These natural colors that
seem to be granted affect our feelings and emotions even though we may not notice it. All of
these aesthetics affect people and designers take those colors to design that appeals to people.
Some designers only focus on form rather than its function and all designers have different
values and beliefs so it depends on the designers and what type of designs that they are in.
However, other designers look at the main functions rather than the form.
For some designers function is the most important purpose when they are designing a
product such as clothes, plates, cars and just about every object that has its own purpose. No
matter how it looks, if the object serves its purpose well thats all it matter for some designers.
Clothes, for instance, serve different purposes by its design most of the comfort clothes and
gym clothes are not as fancy was some of other casual dresses. This is because designers who
focus more in practical side wants consumers to feel comfortable when they wear clothes.
Some designers do favor one of the other but most of the time designers try to look at both
sides trying to satisfy both at the same time.
Various branches in design could be categorized into sub-cultures such as fashion
design, interior design and graphic design. From the sub-culture it has its own values and
beliefs as well. Since sub-cultures are more specific into their design field that designers that
are in different field have to consider different values in their designs. For fashion, it would

VALUES OF DESIGN

value both of tactile and aesthetic design. Interior designer would value the orientation of
objects and service and graphic designers would value visual communications.
Lauren who is currently studying interior design says that the idea of people living in
a place where she has designed the interior of buildings really excites her. Like her
excitement, that excitement continues on and it becomes the value of their interior design
culture. Sheri states that it is important that she creates an environment that suits people and
that people are happy in (Molder 2009). Other core values that interior architecture designers
have are stewardship and technical advancement in keeping all their knowledge to current
and integrity with the first priority.
Fashion, not only focuses on aesthetic beauty but also value the community that
brings color in depth and pleasure to our world (Shin, 2014). Fashion have more to do with
clothes than any other design field and because it has its specific purpose to serve fashion
designer have to value the material that they are going to use for the clothes and the shape
and design of the outward appearance of their clothes. Even if the design were to be the most
beautiful design in the world, made out of glass would not want to make people want to wear
those clothes.
Graphic designers work with drawn, painted, photographed, or computer-generated
images, but also design the letterforms that make up various typefaces found in movie credit
and TV ads: in books magazines, and menus; even on computer screens. Graphic designers
value more of visual designs because their visual communication leads to success in
businesses. Visual conception is perhaps the most important for graphic designers to be able
to imagine as they come up with creative designs.
When a word design is mentioned most often people think of it as planned and
manipulating elements to the form and functions that designers have intentionally planned for.
Design is also mostly perceived as a business because designs play a significant role in

VALUES OF DESIGN

objects that captivate customers, which means that designers have to consider the audience.
Design is in fact is a craft of service, not self-expression (Cummings, 2009). People are
always amazed and surprised by every new innovation that is flowing out of the design
markets. In these design markets, design is combined with the objects function to play in a
role to catch peoples eyes and make people want to buy the products. Society as a whole
could see design as an additional factor that makes people want to buy products. However,
that is not the only purpose of design. The purpose is also providing convenience along with
beauty. There are some products that have very convenient usage in our life such as pots and
pans that we use to cook. But most of them are just plain stainless steel pots or copper made
pots. Some prefer these simple designs but it could also develop its design to produce even
better looking pots and pans. People who pursue beauty will seek for those designs that
satisfy their imagined beauty. Some could say that design is solely centered on the
expressionism and it creates distractions for people to see who other people are in their true
mind. This is not the case for design. The beauties in designs do serve in some sense for the
main appearance but it really depends on who you are as a person. Design not only has to
look good in outward appearance but it can also represent a person and their characters
through designs. Each and every person has their own unique design and in fact each person
could also be said they are one individual creature. Wearing fancy or colorful does not
distract peoples character but rather is speaks their personality because designs are used as a
craft to serve people to express themselves.
Designers are always creating something new that no one could ever think of. There
are plenty of new innovations already in the design markets but not all satisfy consumers. All
designers in the future will use computer system as technology is advancing in increasing
rapid speed. Moreover, different designers will hold different future.
Fashion designer, as their main focus is to make new innovative clothes they have to

VALUES OF DESIGN

10

have cloth materials and other resources to create their designs. Levi Strauss and his
colleagues came up with four scenarios exploring how climate change, resource shortages,
population growth and other factors will affect the fashion industry in 2025. They explored
every aspect of the industry, from production of raw materials, through manufacturing and
sale, to use and end of life (2014). These scenarios gave important impact to cotton futures.
In order for the fashion industry to sustain economically, the environment and social
community have to be sustained (Anderson, 2014).These responses are almost shocking that
the availability of our natural resources is decreasing and these resources could affect the
fashion industry.
As technology advances more features are added to its function that is aiding in
peoples lives and making it even more convenient than ever. The future technology
advancement is also expected to serve us in more convenient and easy way of lives by adding
even better newer features. Which leads some designers to speak up for more features in the
future but Matthew Waldman says completely different things. He mentions that the future
design should focus on the linguistics of design and from linguistic design a real innovation
comes. Different opinions are arising from different designers but the future will hold a lot
more new innovations and creative designs despite the lack of resources.

11

VALUES OF DESIGN

Reference
Bailly, N. (2014, May 26). Design futurist: why humanity needs a universal language of
design. Retrieved from http://www.psfk.com/2014/05/linguistic-designer-humanityneeds-universal-language-design-psfk-2014.html
Burghart A. (2012, December 20). Form follows function- an unclear design principle
Retrived fromhttp://www.centigrade.de/en/blog/article/form-follows-functionan-unclear-design-principle/
Chang, H. (2014, May 1). Dongdaemon design plaza the next landmark of seoul Retrieved
from

http://www.thegranitetower.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=844

Cummings, M. (2009, May 04). Arts vs. design, form and function. Retrieved from
http://uxdesign.com/design/article/good-design/54
Mithra, S. (2014, September 27). What are the most relaxing colors? Retrieved from
http://www.wisegeek.org/what-are-the-most-relaxing-colors.htm
Ossmann F. (2013). what color is comfort? Retrieved from http://www.interiorsbydesignfl.com/articles/IntByDesign_june08.pdf
Poggenpohl, S. (1993). A career guide and education directory. Retrieved from
http://www.aiga.org/guide-whatisgraphicdesign/
Shin K. (2014). The value of fashion design at universities. International Journal of Fashion
Design, Technology and Education, 7(1), 1.Retrieved from
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17543266.2014.882468#.VEGV
moBHCUc
Strauss, L. (2014). Fashion futures 2025. Retrieved from
http://www.forumforthefuture.org/project/fashion-futures-2025/overview