“Design only feels inevitable after it’s finished. When we
admire an elegantly designed object, we feel ‘but of course
– it HAD to be that way!’ But
once upon a time, there were choices. Design
usually begins, unpleasantly and messily, in a sea of
petrifying possibilities.” (pg. 107).
This is a response to Chapter 3 of Artful Design,
Visual Design.
I will be responding to Principle 3.5: Build
Complexity from Simplicity
Recently I was in Red Rock Canyon State Park. From afar, the
stunning textured rocks are draped in alternating tones of deep
and light red from years of iron oxidation; They appear almost
Martian. The colors appear to be the result of red food coloring
sprayed with precision by giants. However, as you approach the
park, distinct lines begin to emerge. It is not until you park,
leave your car, walk down the treacherous pathways of scree,
that one is able to see that in fact, the lines are made of many
splotches of oxidized iron in the rock. Though a function of the
entropy of creation, the small, imperfect circles of red form a
larger, more defined line. These lines, spaced seemingly so
evenly, work to create a system of design which appears as a
grand and organized monument.
Chapter 3 teaches us the design process, riddled with feedback,
iteration, recursion, and embodiment. Function gives rise to
form and motion which manifests personality. This cascade can be
called an element – many of which assemble into a system which
presents a narrative to the human experience which in turn
interacts with the system. There appears to be a common element
both to the principles of visual design set forth in Chapter 3
of Artful Design, and the puzzle parts of nature which
work in commonality to reveal the sublime. That element
is illusion. Small circles of oxidized iron appear from
afar to be rocks draped in red curtains, just as thousands of
pixels in a screen display coordinated colors at fast time
intervals to portray motion from stationary parts.
Zeno’s Interpolator computes intermediate values between
still data points to embody continuity and smoothness. However,
it is an illusion which gives rise to personality in the
inanimate.
I am haunted by the question of whether or not humans perceive
what is absolute in the universe, or if we live with faulty
senses. If we are to say that design, both natural and
artificial, is born from the manipulation of illusion, then is
there anything which appears to us in its truest form?