san valentin
What do Designers Think of Valentines Day?
indesignlive.com asked some of our favourite Australian designers to share their thoughts on commercial ventures such as gift giving on the 14th Feb.
On Valentines Day each year there is no doubt about the mass surge in romantic gift sales that sweeps through Australia at the last minute.
Is this surge because romance is genuinely in the air? Or is it because consumers have fallen victim to another manufactured occasion designed to induce spending on specific products?
& the reply from my heart? - here and below
"Sometimes there just aren't enough problems for there to be solutions designed.
In this case 'design' takes in where the 'question/brief' is emotion and intimate proximity in its direct relation to the material.
In their less cellophane forms these "manufactured occasions" pre-date cola, polaroid moments and well written convenience store cards. So which came first, the occasion or the branded foil covered cadbury egg?
The question is either asking about the meaning of gifts, or designed emotions, or pre-packaged experience. I wouldn't be inclined to blame the occasion as a viral, intent on 'financial purging in the name of'.
On the other hand maybe we are all really just looking for a reason to gift someone without it being all creepy and bribey. For, if I were rolling on ice I'd be Capitan "here you go dear lady - and one for your friend"
Though Design is a Solution; First thing we were taught. So maybe to reverse engineer the question - In this form the solutions 'Problem' is an abstract... A psychological condition of a greater whole. Or an obvious hole in our collective lives - Love and the general craft of post-tranquillity preservation. Tranquillity in this case referential to the time-before the mental-acquisition of concept-idea 'the material'. [Designers just can't really claim Buddhism - for I can only roll my sleeves to anyone sporting such Zen and the art of image citation maintenance. Fold them past my elbows, for easy access.]
We has a problem. We are lonely lost islands left to dry out in the big oceans sun, slowly sinking below the rising sea levels of our lives' accelerating complexity. The one thing keeping our heads above water is the patented hallmark human touch and Disney-come-Pixar buddy pictures.
This is a field expertly explored half a decade ago by Dick and Huxley with their Mood Organs and Soma.
Yet I like it, these holidays... but what it is I like is that someone thought about me, and chose to express it in some way, to me. It is more the giving than the receiving. Perhaps a phone call is tantamount to rouge synth-plush stuffed-hearts repetition... Or even better, no waste.
In a world of schedules, antibiotics, motion graphics and trans-real experience, I likes an old school hug. From a human or a robot - even in the Modern Virtual Reality of MSN. I write this diatribe and more like it from the Yoyogi Stadium in Tokyo on my MacBook Pro. In three days I'm going to engrave a woodgrain pattern on it - an aluminium aegis with affected re-contextualised man-adjusted natural patterns. Here I don't use the bathroom, I use the robot. All Hail techocracy.
So now I wonder if we are programming ourselves to remember such things as annual 'partner appreciation day,' 'family collective communication day,' and 'thus He rose day, so here is an egg for Thine trouble day.'
love expressed in the form of x
understanding understood in the y
stability shown as z
and happiness a result of xyz
all on a shelf
Manufactured Occasion - Pre-packaged experience - its no different to self medicating with MDMA ... Love is a Product in as much as it is a product of combinational harmonics. Yes, Love is a chord structure... major, sometimes minor or just soft and diminished.
I say do it. take it beyond repair, and keep the invoice.
labour x value/hour + thought = < love = X
read as: labour multiplied by value over hour plus thought is equal to greater than love
or is it
hours x [thought + looking for just the right gift] / that perfect giving moment = [mutually beneficial understanding] + [supportive dependency]2 = Y
read as: hours multiplied by thought plus looking for just the right gift over that perfect giving moment is equal to mutually beneficial understanding plus supportive dependency to the power of two.
I am Jewish, from the beginning to the skinning, but I really enjoy the Christmas gatherings and greater gift givings. It is a warm time, everyone together and taking that moment to remind themselves and each other of how they feel - wrapped up in small neatly designated parcels.
I mean... what else are we going to spend our money on?
Gentlemen, go buy your woman something nice. Tell her its from me. I'll probably even pay you back.
Jess, your small-piece-of-my-heart is in the mail."
sruli recht February 12 2008 Tokyo.
