Social and Technological Changes - Essay Example

Social and technological changes always create new social problems and concerns. These concerns force people to think about their social needs at any given time period. As such, it is important how designers influence people’s lives. New innovations are often made out of an attempt to solve social concerns and need at a given time and place and have come about through social change. Even though the three works, William Morris’s The Nature of Gothic, Lucian Bernhard’s Priester Matches (1905), and Stefan Sagmeister’s AIGA poster (1999), are from different time periods and thus have different styles, they are all innovations that derive from the social problems at that time and given place. It is significant that these innovations were made to solve social problems.

William Morris’s design of a chapter cover for Ruskin, The Nature of Gothic, clearly shows that it evolved from a social concern in which the Industrial Revolution caused a deficiency of aesthetic advertising and artwork. People did not want to spend their time on flyers that ultimately disappear and surpassed with new artwork within a few days. William Morris realized that this problem came out of the Industrial Revolution and he attempted to fill society with beauty through decorative and ornamental artwork. He believed that beautiful designs would benefit the people and help to build morality in the people as well. Thus, his beliefs are clearly demonstrated in his design. As a leader of the art and crafts movement, he used very ornamental decorations on the borders of the cover and he showed how he considered aesthetics as an important part of his design. He borrowed medieval imagery and adapted it to a style more suited to the 19th century. His designs helped propel the art and crafts movement and replaced amateur designs, which lacked aesthetics.

Similarly, Bernhard’s innovation was also one of the most successful designs that met the social needs of the day. After the Industrial Revolution, many new businesses were established. At that time, every company’s advertisements followed Art Nouveau. The typical advertisement of the day was busy and crowded looking. Within this vast amount of companies, it was really hard to identify one from another. In contrast to the ornamental and decorative style that dominated advertising and artwork at that time, Bayer’s design was definitely an innovative style. Unlike other advertisements, he did not use decorative elements in his design—he only included matches and the Priester brand. This gave a very solid and clear-looking poster. This obviously made the company stand out from the designs of other companies.

Lastly, Stefan Sagmeister’s AIGA poster also met a social need in society. During the modern era, every designer was seeking a very clean and simple-looking style. As such, almost every designer was working in a specific system. The improvement in technology drove designers to work more with machines. Sagmeister realized that other designs lacked meaning and he took this to be a problem of modern society. He tried to understand the social and cultural problems and also how to relate these problems to humans. His design approach is clearly visible in his AIGA poster. Using himself as a medium of design, he carved messages on his body with cursive handwriting, evoking the emotions of the viewer. This poster also helped him to promote himself as a designer too.

Clearly, all these designs were innovations that had completely different styles from one another; however, these styles are all significant in that they were derived from social concerns. This is one of the most important roles of a designer.