Milestones in applied arts
The historical and contemporary objects and works created in the various applied art genres are collected and researched by museums of applied arts. Besides their artistic importance, these pieces have great sociological value too since they form part of man’s immediate environment, and speak volumes about the tastes of societies, their fashion trends, as well as the level of the technology they use and the embeddedness of their customs. Having taken this train of thought, it is no exaggeration to say that without applied arts there can be no interior decoration, garment and dining culture, street and garden culture, theatres, churches, libraries, schools, offices or even instruments, toys, sports equipment and gifts. And without all this, there would only be mundaneness.
The word ‘design’ was initially only used in English-speaking areas, and merely referred to the act of designing; in other words, it amounted to committing to paper plans that would be later realised through manufacturing. Like everything else born out of man’s desire to think and organise, the philosophical aspect of design also emerged gradually, and the importance of this area began to grow beyond merely that of being the primary task of pencils, computers and copy machines.
In the beginning, design fundamentally focused on the external design of objects: it served the purpose of making the appearance of technically devised machines, vehicles, instruments and furnishing equipment more aesthetic and more marketable. This specialisation of design led to the division of applied arts and eventually evolved into industrial design, whose main objective was, on the one hand, to utilise the experience gained in the areas of individual artisan design and implementation and, on the other hand, to re-evaluate this knowledge and to make goods more competitive by lending them an artistic appearance while also taking technical criteria into consideration. To this effect, products were stripped of the features that distinguish unique artworks, and their value of being mass-produced was increased by an aesthetic surplus being added to them.
Huge product areas were developed around design, and design became a crucial contributor to business success. Such areas included vehicles – from bicycles and cars to trains and aircraft –, the telecommunications industry, the arsenal of media devices, the ready-made clothes industry, furniture and home furnishings, sports equipment production, packaging with its virtually endless opportunities, the textile and home fabrics industry, as well as the extremely diverse production structure of plastic objects and equipment. And the list could go on.
Although it is a declared and oft-quoted basic objective of design to enhance the technical values of the most state-of-the-art products, its true significance is in lending new models or series a distinct appearance and a new character through their materials, colours, forms and handling in the hope that they will help clients to retain their position in the cut-throat competition and perhaps even improve it. A contributing factor in such business success is the promotional potential exploited and shaped by design. It is especially noteworthy that fashions and trends are linked to design in virtually every respect, since one of the main tasks of designers is to develop these.
Mass-scale production imposes great responsibility on design and therefore on designers. While individual or small-series products can `afford to be’ imperfect as they are easier to correct and replace, mass-produced objects cannot go against the general requirements of use, and must consider the ergonomic limitations of the human body as well as mass demands pertaining to their moving, handling, maintenance and easily replaceable parts. This is why such a vast amount of time and resources are devoted in design experiments to harmonising technical parameters, the human factors and form.
This leads on to the moral obligations of design. New designs should not unscrupulously contribute to accelerating the process of replacing old models by new ones when the latter does not introduce any advantages in either its usability or price. A more attractive appearance must neither conceal production faults, nor hide poor technical solutions. In other words, design should not be a midwife at the birth of unnecessary objects. Theoretical approaches to design should not take the direction of endless regurgitations and self-justification but should instead find clear answers to the fundamental questions in order to put paid to any dispute about the significance and the roles attached to design.
Prominent design objects were first collected by museums of applied arts as they were regarded as the continuation of ‘artefacts’ that had previously been created in a range of genres. After important museums of technology were established with their collections housing, researching and safeguarding new products coming from areas such as car-, radio-, telephone- and toy manufacturing, the best products of pioneering importance conceived through design found their way to them. There are many examples worldwide of museums of applied arts preserving and exhibiting the hand-made mementos of the various design attitudes, including sketches, technical drawings and models, and at times they display different variations of the same object side by side to illustrate their symbiosis. The picture is further diversified by those designers – of whom there are more than a few – who are commissioned unique, or high standard mass products which their qualifications and open horizon enable them to realise. In this regard, Hungary is among the leading players. And if it is our experience that the boundaries between applied arts and design occasionally extend into the area of fine art, we can feel justified in our self-esteem to no small degree.
Professor Emeritus Gyorgy Fekete, interior architect
President of the Hungarian Academy of Arts