Design and visuality in the 21st century - Essay Example

GLOBAL ISSUES IN DESIGN AND VISUALITY IN THE 21st CENTURY: CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE STREET Global Issues in Design and Visuality in the 21st Century: Cultural Analysis of the Street Global Issues in Design and Visuality in the 21st Century: Cultural Analysis of the Street The world is full of colorful cultures and their diversity. The term culture states a combination of social, spiritual and emotional aspects or elements of a society and their intellectual development.

Cultural aspects are either inherited or driven by creativity and its manifestation within a society. They also determine the design elements of a society that takes into consideration the natural and built environment, social and ethical values of the people, and aesthetics of the resulting environment. On either way, they have permanent and lasting effects over the society. A well-designed environment can be created through a thoughtful interaction of various design elements. A person feels comfort when an environment meets certain functional or social needs.

Similarly, feelings of joy or sadness, calm or agitation may rise in response to elements and combinations of elements in the built and natural environments. Since the world is full of cultural diversities and theses cultural diversities are directly linked to the creativity hence they also have diverse ways of manifestation around the world. Many individuals and teams of individuals have creatively influenced culture through their imaginations using the emerging technologies of 21 century (e.g., breakthroughs such as the silicon chip, laser surgery, and the Internet).

Beyond the urban structures and individual existence, organic and improvised systems are also emerging. Situated beyond the sophisticated economy and below a level of recognition, they are familiar yet paradoxically invisible. Although the ordinariness of certain common streets objects like construction of barriers, appearance of the blocks and their facades, flee markets, sidewalks, playgrounds, ads on buses, traffic signs, LCD displays, chained-up bicycles, the faades of stores, subway maps, are so ubiquitous that they fail to evoke reflection yet a seemingly endless array of informal and empirical photographs, demonstrating the distinction between an unconscious visualization of singularities and an intelligent perception of generality.

Initiated by the commercial, subject to fictionalization, it is a reference tool engaged in the thoughtful renewal of our visual vocabulary, opposed to the omnipresent iconography we process everyday. Talking to the New York, the world capital of street graphics - a creative kaleidoscope of structures, signs, graffiti, murals and advertising can be observer throughout the streets of New York city. These street structures and graphics capture the city's cultural diversity - jazz age elegance, brash sixties Pop Art, hip-hop graffiti, anarchic stencil and sticker art.

These innovative ideas, styles and media quickly become international trends. New York's landmarks are appropriated for chic fashion advertising and iconic tourist souvenirs, and here too is the city's 9/11 experience, up on the walls in emotionally charged imagery. These cultural aspects and visuality signs prompt something that is still being thought out. Scholars are now working towards a clearer understanding of street cultural design and visuality. According to their views common visual street elements like edges, nodes, paths, enclosures and buffers barriers, appearance of the blocks and their facades, flee markets, sidewalks, playgrounds, ads on buses, traffic signs, LCD displays.

are no longer only an object of art, but rather another product of one's visual culture. The visual aspects of the design are important, however, it is just as important for the design to fulfill the physical, social, emotional and spiritual needs of the people who use the environment (Dawson, 2003, pp.23-89). Bibliography Dawson, B. (2003). Street Graphics: New York. Thames & Hudson.