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Fashion Design History
Arch Academy of Design, Designer, Fashion Design, Historical Evolution of Design No Comments »from the link
http://ezinearticles.com/?History-Of-Fashion-Design-&id=410752
The realm of fashion design, by its sheer glamour and grace, has always been exciting and intriguing. When we talk of fashion design, it implies a form of art that incorporates the nuances of creating clothes and accessories.
The history of fashion design can be traced back to the beginning of the19th century when the designs were the product of the dresses worn in the royal courts. Eventually, Charles Frederick Worth, the first fashion designer, set up his first fashion house in Paris. His designs greatly influenced the people and they labeled them as the designs of the “House Of Worth.” As a result, a designer became synonymous with a particular brand.
Another important designer who made a significant contribution to the evolution of the fashion was Paul Poi Ret. He blended the classical style consisting of aesthetic dressing with Paris fashion. Other important designers of this age were Patou, Vionnet, Fortuny, Lanvin and Chanel.
Throughout the 20th century, Paris remained the world’s fashion hub, with countries such as the US and Britain openly aping the French designs. The post World War era saw the emergence of other countries as the centers of fashion and Paris ceased to be the sole influential factor. The rising British fashion industry brought a new range of street fashion focusing mainly on the young consumers.
Later, American designers such as Calvin Klein And Ralph Lauren came to the fore with their sportswear and made it a style statement. Today, fashion designs can be categorized into two main categories. The haute couture is designed for individual customers. The other category is the ready-to-wear collection. While the former is based on certain themes and is more for creating a style statement, the latter is meant for the masses.
The mid-90s saw the emergence of a new breed of designers who redefined traditional concepts. They looked at fashion from a new angle, creating their own new concepts.
Thus, the world of fashion design has witnessed a steady evolution over the years and has been the by-product of the sincere efforts of many of the top designers.
Mamta Mantri
mamta@archdu.org
Jun 26
Evolution of Industrial Design in India
Arch Academy of Design, Design, Design and Development, Design Brief, Design Knowledge, Design Management, Design Pedagogy, Design Process, Design Thinking, Development, Education, Future, Indian Industry, Marketing No Comments »From the link
http://www.icsid.org/feature/current/articles1133.htm
Design is embedded in the ethos of India, and for centuries it has been displayed through our ingenuity in architecture, art and other cultural manifestations. Unfortunately, India missed the Industrial Revolution, and by the time it recovered, it had to encounter several challenges to keep pace with other countries.
Meanwhile, other countries having gone through the learning curve were slowly graduating to superior products, which had high functionality and were aesthetically appealing. India started using these products and gradually adapted the design expertise to develop their own products. However, over the years, India has witnessed rapid momentum in the field of design, fuelled by the evolution of customers as well as the progress of design as a discipline. The Government of India has supported this endeavour through setting up of premier institutions such as the Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and National Institute of Design (NID) that have been churning out talent for years.
“The right mix of people & resources coupled with a willingness to adopt innovation and technological advancements will enable companies to overcome the barriers to design innovation.”
Design in India is therefore gaining prominence across various industries and is considered a key differentiator for any brand. Today, design is not just the prerogative of big multinationals, but even regional brands understand the role of design and the value it adds.
Overcoming Barriers to Design Innovation
Conventional approach to design development, poor availability of technology, high cost of development as well as inadequate involvement of key stakeholders – to ensure continuity of the process of innovation – are the factors that impede design innovation. This can be summarised into three key barriers – managerial, technological and financial. One needs to have a long-term objective to overcome these barriers. Moreover, the acceptance from the end customers decides the success of the innovation and its longevity.
“In the past, advances in design have been driven by the development of new materials, processes and product architecture. With the strain on natural materials, organisations in the future will consider combining the strengths of various materials to create a unique and superior material. The materials of the future will also have to be sustainable.”
With the right mix of people & resources coupled with a willingness to adopt innovation and technological advancements, making it a part of the development eco-system, these barriers can definitely be overcome.
Successful and Winning Design
Design as a discipline aims at solving problems or enhancing lives of end users worldwide. End users today are very demanding and have many expectations from brands, which, if not complied with, have a possibility of going into oblivion in a short period. Hence, it is important that any design should address the needs of the end user. It also has to be functionally and financially viable to appeal to a wide range of end users. It, therefore, is a combination of using a creative solution and channelising it in the right direction to obtain the optimum output.
In other words, it is an inspiration that sparks a creative idea, which needs to be driven through a process to make it a viable business.
Achieving ‘Design Success’
Today, design is about understanding the needs of end customers, the role a design will play in their life and the technology of realising the design. Organisations, therefore, should focus on these aspects to ensure integration of these aspects into a homogeneous design so as to address all expectations of the customer. Moreover, there should be an underlining notion of innovation to ensure that the designs help the brand owners to create a differentiator.
Factors to Lead India Towards Becoming a Global Design Hub
While several factors can enable India to become the global design hub, the key factors include talent, technological expertise, focus on innovation, ability to optimise development and acute understanding of customers’ needs.
Role of Government and Industry
The government and industry both play an important role in giving design its due recognition.
The government and industry need to strongly advocate the tangible and intangible benefits of design, regardless of the type of industry it is being applied to. They should take initiatives to create awareness among original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and service providers about the competitive advantage of original designs and target small-scale & cottage industries to encourage greater use of designs in all products in India. Efforts should be taken to position India as a leading propagator and practitioner of high-quality & prudent design as well as impart training for design development at every level and make it a part of the system. They should promote exchange of design with other countries and renowned institutions by creating a seamless channel for development. The government and industry should make efforts to spark interest in creative and cultural industries to enable designers to draw upon India’s rich cultural heritage for inspiration to create novel and distinctive designs.
They should emphasise on creation of original Indian designs in products & services in order to create a design-enabled innovation economy.
Labelling ‘Designed in India’ on All Manufactured Products in India
India is slowly but surely transforming into a global research & development (R&D) hub. Design is a critical element of any R&D activity and is expected to play a greater role in product development. Customers have now begun to demand the latest designs and technologies available around the world but with an Indian influence. The time is not far when India will transform into a new superpower in the field of design and certain product categories will be associated with being Indian.
Role of New Materials In Design Advancements
In the past, advances in design have been driven by the development of new materials, processes and product architecture. For example, the use of composite materials has made aircraft and cars lighter, thereby increasing their performance.
With the strain on natural materials, organisations in the future will consider combining the strengths of various materials to create a unique and superior material. The materials of the future will also have to be sustainable.
Catalysts for Design Development
The catalysts are innovation, technology and design processes, which when combined, can create truly intuitive designs. Moreover, support by the government will play a paramount role in promoting design and its collaboration with private organisations in order to create an eco-system for design development.
Creating a Novel Breakthrough Product
There is a need to identify key opportunities, innovate through design and implement it in the most efficient manner so as to realise a higher percentage of innovative products.
Mamta Mantri
mamta@archdu.org
Jun 26
CRAFTS AND DESIGN
Arch Academy of Design, Crafts and Accesory Design, Creativity, Design, Growth, Hand based Knowledge No Comments »from the link
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=35418&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
Artisanal products are those produced by artisans, either completely by hand, or with the help of hand tools or even mechanical means, as long as the direct manual contribution of the artisan remains the most substantial component of the finished product. These are produced without restriction in terms of quantity and using raw materials from sustainable resources. The special nature of artisanal products derives from their distinctive features, which can be utilitarian, aesthetic, artistic, creative, culturally attached, decorative, functional, traditional, religiously and socially symbolic and significant.
(definition adopted by the UNESCO/ITC Symposium “Crafts and the international market: trade and customs codification” – Manila, 6-8 October 1997)
As the only international organization with a global vision of the socio-cultural and economic role played by crafts in society, UNESCO has, for many years now, endeavoured to develop well-balanced, coherent and concerted action in favour of this sector. The programmes devoted to crafts facilitate training and promotional activities and stimulate the necessary cooperation between the relevant national bodies and regional, international and non-governmental organizations. The aim of the different actions undertaken by UNESCO is to prove to the concerned authorities that the artisanal sector deserves priority in national development plans.
UNESCO has been specially involved in stimulating the creation of original models through the UNESCO Crafts Prize from 1990 to 2005, and, since 2001, in the promotion of quality handicrafts through the UNESCO Award of Excellence for Handicrafts, and also in the commercialization of artisanal products on the international market. In this view, a series of activities are carried out for artisans’ training (through further training workshops) and for the promotion of craft products outside of their place of origin (in exhibitions held at UNESCO Headquarters or on the occasion of international fairs).
Moreover, UNESCO encourages regional and international cooperation by supporting the organization of meetings of experts. The aim is to improve the life and working conditions of the artisan, to protect craft creation and to harmonize data collection on crafts. The books, studies and reports published by UNESCO on this subject are widely disseminated.
UNESCO organized an International Symposium-Workshop on natural dyes which took place in Hyderabad (India) from 5 to 12 November 2006. It brought together master craftpersons, researchers and specialists in natural dyes and craft promoters from the five continents. The aim of this encounter was to attain practical outcomes based on the diversity of experiences and respectful of the variety of natural, social and cultural environment of the concerned craftspeople.
In the framework of design, with the aim of stimulating and recognizing the creativity of young designers worldwide,
UNESCO implements the Design 21 programme.
The UNESCO Programme for Crafts and Design also hosts the Tribute 21 project which is meant to create “DREAM centres” for artistic activities in favour of children in countries in post-conflict situation.
Mamta Mantri
mamta@archedu.org
Jun 25
from the link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_industries
How creative workers are counted
The DCMS classifies enterprises and occupations as creative according to what the enterprise primarily produces, and what the worker primarily does. Thus, a company which produces records would be classified as belonging to the music industrial sector, and a worker who plays piano would be classified as a musician.
The primary purpose of this is to quantify – for example it can be used to count the number of firms, and the number of workers, creatively employed in any given location, and hence to identify places with particularly high concentrations of creative activities.
It leads to some complications which are not immediately obvious. For example, a security guard working for a music company would be classified as a creative employee, although not as creatively occupied.
The total number of creative employees is then calculated as the sum of:
- all workers employed in creative industries, whether or not creatively occupied (e.g. all musicians, security guards, cleaners, accountants, managers, etc. working for a record company)
- all workers that are creatively occupied, and are not employed in creative industries (for example, a piano teacher in a school). This includes people whose second job is creative, for example somebody who does weekend gigs, writes books, or produces artwork in their spare time
Properties or characteristics of creative industries
A toy cat produced in a South-African township, made from used plastic bags and old wire
According to Caves (2000), creative industries are characterized by seven economic properties:
- Nobody knows principle: Demand uncertainty exists because the consumers’ reaction to a product are neither known beforehand, nor easily understood afterward.
- Art for art’s sake: Workers care about originality, technical professional skill, harmony, etc. of creative goods and are willing to settle for lower wages than offered by ‘humdrum’ jobs.
- Motley crew principle: For relatively complex creative products (e.g., films), the production requires diversely skilled inputs. Each skilled input must be present and perform at some minimum level to produce a valuable outcome.
- Infinite variety: Products are differentiated by quality and uniqueness; each product is a distinct combination of inputs leading to infinite variety options (e.g., works of creative writing, whether poetry, novel, screenplays or otherwise).
- A list/B list: Skills are vertically differentiated. Artists are ranked on their skills, originality, and proficiency in creative processes and/or products. Small differences in skills and talent may yield huge differences in (financial) success.
- Time flies: When coordinating complex projects with diversely skilled inputs, time is of the essence.
- Ars longa: Some creative products have durability aspects that invoke copyright protection, allowing a creator or performer to collect rents.
The properties described by Caves have been criticized for being too rigid (Towse, 2000). Not all creative workers are purely driven by ‘art for art’s sake’. The ‘ars longa’ property also holds for certain noncreative products (i.e., licensed products). The ‘time flies’ property also holds for large construction projects. Creative industries are therefore not unique, but they score generally higher on these properties relative to non-creative industries.
Difference from the ‘cultural industries’
There is often a question about the boundaries between creative industries and the similar term of cultural industries. Cultural industries are best described as an adjunct-sector of the creative industries. Cultural industries include industries that focus on cultural tourism and heritage, museums and libraries, sports and outdoor activities, and a variety of ‘way of life’ activities that arguably range from local pet shows to a host of hobbyist concerns. Thus cultural industries are more concerned about delivering other kinds of value—including cultural wealth and social wealth—rather than primarily providing monetary value. (See also cultural institutions studies.)
The creative class
Some authors, such as the American economist Richard Florida, argue for a wider focus on the products of knowledge workers, and judge the ‘creative class‘ (his own term) to include nearly all those offering professional knowledge-based services.
Difference from the ‘knowledge industries’
The term creative industries begins to elide with knowledge economy and questions of intellectual property ownership in general.
The creative class and diversity
Florida’s focus leads him to pay particular attention to the nature of the creative workforce. In a study of why particular US cities such as San Francisco seem to attract creative producers, Florida argues that a high proportion of workers from the ‘creative class‘ provide a key input to creative production, which enterprises seek out. He seeks to quantitatively establish the importance of diversity and multiculturalism in the cities concerned, for example the existence of a significant public gay community, ethnic and religious variety, and tolerance. (Florida 2002)
Mamta Mantri
mamta@archedu.org
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