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Exercise: Historical and Cross-Media Sources for Visual Ideas

The assignment is due Monday November 19 Objective:
*To demonstrate your ability to recognize and identify stylistic influences in design, based on the material presented in class on the history of fine arts, dress and decorative arts.

*To demonstrate how designers can draw on the past history of design to create contemporary designs

Although you cannot know exactly what was in a particular designer's mind, there is no doubt that the repertoire of historical art and design is an important source for new design. This exercise is intended to help you understand how the historical repertoire of visual ideas can be used in the creation of new work.

General Instructions: For this exercise you will need to identify three contemporary functional designed objects in three separate clippings that exhibit featuresderived from the historic design or art styles discussed in class. The contemporary designed objects may be fashions, furnishings, or accessories. The historic sources of design ideas may be similar objects from an earlier era; or the source may even be from another medium; for example, a dress or furniture design that quotes from themes of an established designer or design style, or a dress that borrows ideas from architecture or interior design styles.

Limit yourself for historic sources of influence to choices within the Euro-American design traditions discussed in class.

Historic Source examples should not be earlier than 1800 or later than 1955

Procedure:
1. To start with select six to eight contemporary examples of fashion, fashion accessories, or furnishings.

• Contemporary means created within the last year and published within the last six months. Six to eight examples are recommended so that you will find the next step - matching - easier. Note the source of each clipping: title of publication, page #, month and year. You will need to provide this information for each example used. Do NOT select items where the article or ad is actually making the historic etc. comparison for you. Find images that are not specifically identified as inspired by a historic example.

• These examples must be clippings or clear photocopies from recent (no earlier than May 2006) issues of magazines such as Vogue, In Style, Yes, Interior Design, Architectural Digest, or other leading design magazines. Black and white photocopies are acceptable as long as they have the necessary detail, but get color copies if color is a factor in the comparison. Catalogues are not an acceptable source.Magazines must have been published within the last six months.

• The contemporary source idea you select as showing historical borrowing may be a whole form, or a specific detail or feature of the design. Look for historical borrowing that is seen in combination with other features that create a new, modern idea.

Look for examples that are presented as modern in style, but which nonetheless seem to borrow ideas from the past. Such examples will typically incorporate selected features from traditional models, but will not share all features with that source. Also avoid generic styles such as tailored suits or shirts, dresses with tight bodices and full skirts, or very simple pieces of furniture-- that is, styles that have been worn/used in almost every period (unless you find a match that is exceptionally close in detail).

2. Go to the library You can go to the stacks and look at costume history or furniture history books. A quick online search using the keywords "costume history," "furniture history", or "decorative arts history" will get you to the right sections of the library. Costume history books will be mostly found in Mann Library, but Furniture or decorative arts history may also be found in the Art Library in Sibley Hall. You can use online sources, providing the historic examples are clearly dated and are from a museum or university sponsored site, or a published book that has been placed online. Private historic costume and decorative arts sites are frequently unreliable in their identification of items. Printing out the online textbook pages for images may be helpful in reviewing the possibilities before you head to the library, but you may not copy images from the FSAD 125 online course textbook for inclusion in the assignment. You need to provide a dated image from a reliable source as defined above.

• Look for ONE visual example of historic design that corresponds to each one of the contemporary examples, until you have THREE satisfactory pairs. Do NOT select several objects to compare with the other object. YOU choose the best single item to compare with another single item.

• Each example in a pair should show a specific visual relationship to specific feature(s) in the other example.

• Note the source, date and style of each match as you find it: include Author, Title, page #. Photocopy or scan the historic source images. Be sure a photocopy is clear enough to show the relevant feature(s) (there is more than one copy machine in the library!)

• Note: If you have more than three possible modern designs selected when you go to the library, you may find it faster and easier to locate the three matched pairs you need. However even if you end up making more than three matches, turn in ONLY THREE PAIRS -you select the 3 best examples, NOT US. IF you hand in more than 3, we will grade the first 3 in the batch only.

• Points taken off for paperclips; they always fall off and/or capture other papers.

4. Label all images with their source:

• author for books, title of publication, page #, date of publication (month and year for magazines

• URL for web page. If possible, use the URL for the specific page where the image was found within the web site.

• and, in the case of the historic or cross-media example, the correctly style and date of the item.

5. Write a BRIEF (few words or 1-2 sentences) statement on the same piece of paper with the image. Merely indicate what specific feature(s) you see as a historical or cross-media borrowing.

The assignment is due Monday November 19

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