The Beauty of the Right Brain

The Beauty of the Right Brain

“We” All Share It

(An Essay on Bright Minds, Beautiful Ideas)

            We as designers all share one thing in common, regardless what our choice of medium is, or our field of work, our interests and dislikes, our views or opinions on certain topics; we all share the beautiful ability to create, to be creative, to be unique. To allow one to be curious when the answer is not in sight or in reach. I came across an interesting and inspiring passage that portrays my opinions in which I developed throughout this reading in the blog “designenvy”, a curated blog of design excellence selected by designers, for designers. In this blog was a passage on the difference of how people think based on the phenomenon of “right brained and left brained people” There is an image with a brain for a Mercedes commercial and it has a flourish of colors on the right of the brain, and an orderly line design on the left. The text reads, “I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers, I am in order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.” To me this explains the people who are not artistic minded or design driven, they follow order and look for one answer on the other hand the other half reads a different story. “I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feet. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.” I felt that this truly grasps how we as designers can identify with each other despite all differences. With that being said, I can identify with all four of the designers mentions in Bright Minds, Beautiful Ideas, but to identify with them personally on a larger scale, in more detail is how I decided who I respond to most in looking at who I am and want to pursue being as a designer. The two designers I identified with and respond to the most are Bruno Munari and Marti Guixe. I will start with Bruno Munari, who as well as Marti Guixe, answers in a very unique way about the challenging and infamous question. What is design?

            This question, analyzed by people with the brain of a designer or artist is fascinating because no single designers will have the same response. Therefore other designers identify with these observations and ideas and expand on them. One of these designers being Bruno Munari, who discusses four words and their function towards the meaning of design: fantasy, invention, creativity, and imagination. He talks about how each one of these words facilitate off of each one another and propel the creation of all elements of design. I really respond to this because his explanation on the way of seeing in the world is based on what we know and what is familiar, such as seeing a face in the moon because that is one of the strongest memories a human will associate with. I feel that going back to my thoughts on the right brain idea that his statement is geared towards how most people see, and how designers see.

            Italian artist and designer Bruno Munari appeared to be a right brained Renaissance man, he is extraordinarily influential because he was such a successful writer, designer, architect, graphic designer, educator, and philosopher. He also appeals to me influentially because during him time this field of aesthetics and design was only rewarded for making “beautiful things” and Munari seemed to challenge that. Another way that I identify with Munari is the fact that he was an artist as well as a designer because I consider myself in those realms as well. Most think that artists and designers cannot coexist in the same mediums of work, or think the same but to me I think they go hand in hand and they propel each other to see from two points of view. I find this very intriguing about Munari because it is personal to me how I have the same values with the idea of art and design together. He even says in his now world famous book, “the designer is, the artist of today”, making the connections he learned as an artist and facilitating that into a new way for people to look at design and art instead of just looking at a painting and having feelings and opinions about it, but rather putting the aesthetics of art into design.

Many of Munari’s pieces are very influential to the way I create. He says, “the greatest obstacle to understanding a work of art is trying too hard”, I feel that I do this a lot and overthink the piece which makes it even more difficult to create, when sometimes just spontaneously constructing and letting things happen as the material lets it creates an even more beautiful piece of art. The paintbrush with the pigtails and the spontaneously created lamp do not necessarily come off as something that would be a piece of art, but I have also learned from Munari’s work that some pieces have meaning and different aspects than just a pretty picture, or a beautifully made chair. His lamp is very interesting because he uses material natural to him and to the environment, and even if a different material would have been better he lets it fall together as it may to create one form. Another piece I really respond to is the series “Seeking Comfort in an Uncomfortable Chair”, because we just completed a project over persistence of time and showing changes. It explains how photos only show one instant in time rather than what goes on throughout the rest of the environment and followed by arranging them in a way that shows almost one single environment with the evolution of time showing through each photo.  His serious shows the evolution of time reading in an uncomfortable share, and the movement that occurs in this uncomfortable chair. Munari is a very remarkable artist and designer with many bright and wonderful ideas about designing and making. His work is different, and addresses problems, questions the norm or ordinary things, and uses imagination to the highest potential. One of the most valuable things I took from learning about this artist was his remark, “Making things complicated is easy. Achieving simplicity is tough”.

            I first responded to identifying with the designer Marti Guixe when the opening statement on him identified him as “beyond design”. That was ingtruiging to me when I first started reading about him because it meant he was much more than just the label of a designer and questioned other values and challenged different things that  were way beyond design which is really inspiring to me. It makes me want to be able to not just have the “job” of being a designer and not just do tasks at hand to get them done and move on to the next thing and constantly think about just “designing”, but rather grow and learn from exploring and questioning and challenging things that are beyond the norm of design.  The next sentence in the opening paragraph on Guixe also helped me develop a personal relation to him because it says he has the mind of an artist, which is my outlook on things, as well as with Munari. I think the both go hand in hand in becoming a great designer, just like I think the left and right brain must function together to make the best possible result of the two differences, and make them function as one. However, with that being said, Guixe seems drastically different than many designers, which I like, because he focuses on how things work: focusing on ideas, functions, and systems.

I am not familiar with the concepts and ideas of modern art that deals with global issues on an artistic and humorous level, as well as real world issues, living matter, and human interaction. With that said, it was very interesting to learn how these concepts effect people and how they react to these subtle “jokes”, and it has inspired me to be more open with these types of ideas that I am not familiar with and try to understand them better because I find them fascinating. I respect and think his position on the fact that people did not accept his work in the category of what everyone else views as design or art, and deciding to move himself into his own comfortable category where he is accepted and “free”.  His work may not be considered as “designing products” because they aren’t things that can really be sold,  but they challenge and question real world ideals, and how people react to them being in such a consumer generated and contemporary society.

The works that I find very interesting by Guixe are the “functional tattoos” because I not only think they are kind of humorous because they just seem so ridiculous in the sense that these would never be a functional idea, but the creativity to actually decide to put this idea out there is interesting. On the other hand I find the “sponsored food” idea extremely inspiring because this is a global issue, and this is a type of idea that gets people attention and it is personal and has feeling to it. He explains his reasoning for the idea of sponsored food for his artist friends who work in awful jobs just to make the money to survive, and cannot focus of creating and making as they would if their situation economically was different. I find this very personal, and understand conceptual ideas more after I studied this piece longer. Another piece by Guixe that I really respond to is his idea of portraying “teamwork” in his wall piece in Barcelona because although it may not be seen as design, it has a deeper meaning with such a simple object of tape. His drawings are very interesting and different because they really don’t have meaning and although I didn’t understand them, I was curious about his thought process. They all seem to have  a sense of a thought process and I think that all designers must conform to the idea that some, but not all pieces will come together spontaneously, and you must have a timeline and idea of what you want to say to the viewer. They are also visually appealing and are intriguing to look at which is another factor that happens to be important to many pieces. At the end of the reading the photos of Guixe traveling to various places and photographing time and movement by social interaction really tell a story and show realistic events of how time and place change. I find all of Guixe’s outlooks and ideas about him as a designer are very influential and I hope to start to develop to be my own designer and have a name for myself in the sense that Guixe does, he doesn’t care how people want him to design or make, but he just does what he sees in his mind and creates anyways.

            Designers are not just simply people who make and create, they are above the idea of what is capable and what is not. They questions beyond the obvious answer; look at problems in a more challenging way, and share their insight of design to the world. I have evaluated much of who I am as a designer, and what I would like to do with my ideas in the sense that I have noticed that I do not challenge things in a unique or interesting way. I have been just doing the projects at hand and moving on to the next one, and learning about both of these artists has helped me realize you will only be a one dimensional designer that way: I want to challenge and question beyond design.