#design-history

#design-history

It's easy, for me at least, to be cynical about the state of design. Our visual environment can feel bland, everything from brands to buildings homogenized around similar styles. The ever-impending AI takeover can make the future of this work uncertain. My reading around design this year tended to focus on two things: looking back and looking ahead. In looking through design history, I was looking for glimpses of alternative ways of designing: the experimental, the absurd, the weird.

Leena Robinson/Shutterstock Who needs a calendar when you have regular trips to Starbucks? As lights start twinkling, tinsel begins draping, and festive choruses commence ringing from radios, there's another tell-tale sign that holiday festivities are knocking: Starbucks holiday cups. The chain's signature red products have become synonymous with winter, and fans eagerly await the new patterns each year. Still, there's something many people don't know: these designs weren't always red.

"Open Twitter, LinkedIn, or any blog platform. Scroll for five minutes. You'll see the same articles rewritten 50 different ways. Headlines like: morning routines of successful people, is coding dead in the age of AI, top programming languages to learn this year, how to stop procrastinating once and for all, ChatGPT will revolutionize everything, side hustles you can start today."

These skulls, though, are only the latest in a decades-long trend that, according to United States Patent and Trademark Office records, saw the rate of skulls and skeletons in American logos increase by a factor of almost seven from the 1980s to the 2010s. Throughout the last decade, skulls and skeletons appeared in nearly one of every 200 new U.S. logos, a number that has dipped only slightly in the 2020s.

While many historic trends should probably stay in the past, the best beanbag chairs are one item making a very welcome comeback. These playful pieces of furniture emerged on the design scene in the late 1960s when Italy's Zanotta Design commissioned Cesare Paolini, Piero Gatti, and Franco Teodoro to design the first beanbag chair. It quickly took off from there, becoming a laid-back fixture in basements and living rooms across the world.

A new exhibition at Paris' Musée des Arts Décoratifs celebrates the movement's centenary, while showcasing its continued relevance today. Spread across three floors, the more than 1,000 pieces on show span from the elaborate - think embroidered silk evening dresses by Madeleine Vionnet and Frantz Jouradin and glass and silver creations by René Lalique - to the everyday, such as cups and saucers, coffee pots, and even a toaster, a result of departments stores putting the Art Deco style into mass production.

Passionate about decorative arts, design history, or material culture? Eager to discover how object-based study can advance your curatorial and scholarly interests? Attend an open house at Bard Graduate Center 's NYC campus to learn about our outstanding faculty, thriving and close-knit community, and institutional relationships with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, and American Museum of Natural History.

BMW just made a subtle change to the logo on its latest car. The German automaker simplified the roundel on its new, fully electric BMW iX3 by removing the inner outlines of the logo. Most people won't even notice. So why bother? As luxury automakers adapt to an electric future, they're updating their branding too, and different companies have taken different approaches.

10 years after 's final bow, the aesthetics of the era maintain a grip on modern design lovers as strong as Don Draper's mid-morning Old Fashioned. The show catalyzed the renewal of public interest in midcentury modern design with its depiction of geometric offices and warm, open residences. Like "hipster" or "democracy," though, the true definition of "midcentury modern" has steadily eroded from overuse and blatant misrepresentation on Facebook Marketplace. Its principles, however, endure.

Do you fancy yourself as a graphic design master? Think you know who designed all of the world's best logos, are au fait with design movements and know your collage from your mosaic?