#designstudio2020

Dear Design Studio,

Here are my questions about my interests in fashion, beauty, and travel culture. Please feel free to comment any questions or suggestions that you think will encourage critical thinking.

FASHION

What makes fast fashion irresistible?

How might we...

..implement the attraction to fast fashion with sustainable and ethical practices for fashion?

..encourage and promote sustainable shopping for clothes?

..sell sustainable clothing inexpensively?

..make the clothing manufacturing process more meaningful?

..shift social media influencers mindset on promoting fast fashion with horrible backgrounds?

..expose fast fashion in a way to advocate for change rather than ignoring its undeniable issues?

..make fashion culture have a more conscious approach but still be a fun way of expression?

Why does clothing have a large impact on our culture? What does fast fashion accomplish that can and cant be successful with sustainable branding?

How can fashion continue to be a form of expression with sustainable methods? Why do social media influencers and everyday people ignore fast fashion issues? What actions should fast fashion companies or social media influencers take to promote sustainable and ethical practices?

Is fashion always self-expression, or are there multiple aspects to our desire to be seen in certain clothes/outfits/brands? Are fashion and self-expression even compatible?

BEAUTY

How can we shift beauty standards to reflect individual, inclusive beauty?

Why do beauty products typically promote enhancements or the covering of flaws instead of promoting natural beauty? How can beauty products promote natural beauty?

How might beauty standards change in the next few years? What impact does social media have on beauty standards? How can we change the traditional beauty standards?

Is beauty empowering, or is it confidence that is empowering, and are they related?

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, who is the beholder currently? Is make-up empowering, or does it imply that we are not good enough as is?

How does makeup create a positive impact? How does makeup create a negative impact? What can we learn from negative impacts of beauty standards? How can women be encouraged to feel beauty without makeup?

TRAVEL

How can travel become more culturally, ethically, environmentally, and sustainably conscious? How can tourism be a positive impact for countries' economy and environment? How can we inform travelers about detrimental issues (that cannot be ignored) of the countries they are visiting? Is there a type/mode of travel that could be seen as a net-gain to the world?

What about travel representations on social media is toxic? How can we prevent toxic methods and ideas of traveling to developing countries? Why and how do social media influencers ignore serious issues of travel and developing countries? How can we shift the experience of traveling to impact the traveller and the location in a positive way? What are the major issues of social media travel culture?

Sincerely,  

Dear Design Studio,

Quarantine has given us all the opportunity to discover and acknowledge our interests. Personal interests can be given deeper comprehension and attention with the extra time we have on our hands, sometimes even unknowingly.  

During my stay-at-home experience, I have been guilty of spending too much time on social media. Although social media can be mindless entertainment and fantasizing, it has shown me personal areas of interest that are worth investing my time in and learning about.

Fashion has always been a defining passion of mine on multiple levels. On one hand, I love how fashion can be a form of individualized and experimental expression. On the other hand, from my exposure, the fashion world has it toxic standards and practices. Specifically fast fashion and its unsustainable, heartless process. Fast fashion has such a high demand and has become so engraved in modern culture as a source of clothing. Even I admit I have fallen into the fast fashion culture at times because it felt like it was my only way of getting new clothing for cheap in current times. Obviously, that is not the case and there’s no excuse for supporting companies. Fast fashion is a phenomenon that has a variety of issues to go deeper into.

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude." — Maya Angelou

Another phenomenon that sparks my interest is the beauty culture and the standards behind it. Makeup is another form of self expression that is rapidly becoming more unconventional. I find beauty so empowering, but similar to fashion (and any community really), it has its issues partly due to certain beauty stands that have been implemented in society.

"Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it" — Confucius

As I mentioned earlier, social media lures me into fantasizing and wishful thinking. Although it is not plausible for my principles, travel has been something that has been on my mind from social media exposure. Traveling is an interest of mine because the world has so much to offer through the beauty of nature and culture. I feel a strong fascination with exploring the earth because we only have one life to experience the world. However, I cannot let myself get entangled in fantasies of the world and wonders when our earth is hurting in so many way because of humans. I know I cannot be ignorant of the causes to our earth dying. This is a serious issue that is more of a responsibility to give attention than an interest.

“Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” — Marie Curie

Sincerely,  

Dear Design Studio, 

My direction is going to be beauty because I want to learn more about the philosophy of beauty and its connection with modern society. I am interested in this topic because I find beauty fascinating as a designer and a woman. Beauty is a feeling I appreciate and enjoy but it does not control my life. Where does that control of beauty come from? I am interested in how aesthetics and beauty affect our lives and its importance to society.

I watched two videos of people getting questioned about defining beauty (questionnaire starter). The first video was called “How People Define Beauty Around the World”. The main question was “What is beauty?” The answers that stood out to me were elegance, inner peace, intelligence, and it’s subjective. The next question was “What makes women beautiful?” Some answers were natural beauty (when you act natural) and some people got into specific physical features. When asked “What makes men beautiful?”, one said a man might get offended being called beautiful. Other answers had to do with physical traits, taking care of family and being vulnerable. The second video was titled, “Girls Ages 5-18 Talk About What Beauty Means to Them”. Some things the girls said were “beauty is something people like,” “my DNA is beautiful because I have both my parents’ DNA,” “beauty is all around us,” and “embracing who you are is beautiful.” Some other answers were beauty is personality, confidence, learning lessons and growing from them, and subjective.

I am less curious about the surface level beauty that surrounds our culture, and I am more curious about the psychology and philosophy of beauty. I want to understand the deeper meaning of beauty, how it makes us feel, and the future of beauty. What is beauty? And why does it exist?

Adjacent to my topic of beauty is social media, fashion, nature, aesthetics, humans, women, art and society. Social media is the hub of beauty standards and fascination. Fashion is always using the most beautiful women, or the standard of beauty: tall, thin, luscious hair, strong facial feature, etc. The definition of aesthetic is “a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art. It examines subjective and sensori-emotional values, or sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste.”

People operating in and adjacent to my topic area area are philosophers of beauty (i.e. Plato, Immanuel Kant), Vogue Magazine, professors, artists and designers, or social media influencers/brands.

I reviewed a Ted Talk called “A Darwinian Theory of Beauty” by Dennis Dutton. The main takeaway about beauty from the talk was, “We find beauty in something done well. Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, it is deep in our minds, it is a gift handed down from the intelligent skill and rich emotional minds of our ancient ancestors.” He goes on discussing how the experience of beauty is one of the ways of evolution has of arousing and sustaining interest for adaptive decisions in survival and reproduction. Beauty is a magnetism to give one pleasure by simply looking. I learned that beauty is a natural instinct and it will be around for all of the human generation.

Another Ted Talk I reviewed was “How Beauty Feels” by Richard Seymour. He asked the questions “Do we think beauty or do we feel it?” He said he believes we feel beauty inside of us. Beauty is a feeling. Beauty is rooted in our emotional part of our brains and maybe what we’re seeing and sensing and feeling is bypassing our thinking. He also asked the question, “Is it possible to separate intrinsic and extrinsic beauty?” Intrinsically, universally, and exquisitely beautiful things are very hard to come by. So most beauty tends to be extrinsic mediated by information before or added to the comprehension. He strives to make his designs emotional functional and gravitating. Those are the things that people find beautiful, sentimental, and wonderful. It makes me wonder, if beauty is sentimental because everyone has different views and backgrounds on beauty.

Sincerely,  

Dear Design Studio,

Happy Friday the Thirteenth! I made a questionnaire to help me gather research for developing ideas and concepts. It would be greatly appreciated if you could fill out this form by answering any of the questions and giving me detailed answers please. My Midterm Presentation is posted here on my blog if you want to learn more about my topics/intent. 

Intent: 

to redesign everyday objects/spaces with beauty/aesthetics to create daily positive experiences

to rethink beauty in design for the purpose of enhancing life’s experiences and senses

https://forms.gle/m3tGVHRVrGPwCVKx6

[questionnaire to research what aspects of everyday life could use more aesthetically pleasing design for a more positive experience daily]

Sincerely, 

Dear Design Studio, 

After watching this video on why humans find certain things beautiful, I gained some new insight on my project intent. Most people never stop to think why they find something beautiful. With new studies on neuroesthetics, there has been a discovery of reaction patterns to beauty in the human brain. 

A professor in neuroesthetics, Dr. Semir Zeki, studies and captures the reason for stimulation of beauty clearly. The brain is the source that define beauty. The part of the brain that interprets beauty is the same area that is described as the reward and pleasure center of the brain. The area of the cortex, whose activity is associated with the perception of beauty, is generally activated every time we enjoy it, whether this beauty is of visual, musical, cognitive, or even mathematical origin. There is a flow of dopamine when we look at something beautiful because it brings the brain pleasure. 

It is important to mention that in Dr. Zeki’s experiment, purposefully, none of the subjects were artist or musicians because they did not want any bias from prior knowledge in the field. Can certain types of beauty only be appreciated with a certain level of education or expertise? By understanding the historical or cultural context of the artwork, it can influence the perception of the artwork as beautiful.

When observing brands in the modern world, they need to consider beauty universally to be inclusive. This has led brand and logo designers to utilize and capitalize on universally recognized forms of beauty. The golden ratio is a common formula used and seen in history and modern society. What is the golden ratio? The golden ratio was created by ancient mathematicians to quantify the beautiful symmetry found in nature (as seen below). Although recent studies discovered the golden ratio might not be the subconscious standard of beauty that ancient philosophers believed, the golden ratio is still a powerful tool to create aesthetically pleasing art and design. 

Ultimately, the definition of beauty is personal because of the influence that experiences have on one’s mind.

A research document discussing the perception of beauty in the artistic field gave me some great insight and knowledge on the history and development of the philosophy of beauty. A specific philosophy of beauty that stood out to me was David Hume’s theories:

“It should be noted that the perception of beauty underwent a psychological conversion in modernity, especially with the empiricist aesthetics of David Hume. This change resulted in a relativization of the concept of beauty, which neuroaesthetics is still trying to address at present.”

I learned about empiricism and how it plays a role in the perception of beauty. 

“Empiricism is characterized, among other things, as the rejection of the existence of innate ideas and the assertion that all our knowledge necessarily arises from sensible experience, that is, it has its origin in the senses.”

When it comes to David Hume’s empiricist philosophy, there are several principles that stand out:

“In the first place, he affirms that all our ideas come from sensible impressions. In the second place, he makes a critique of the idea of cause that has greatly influenced contemporary theories of science. For Hume, the causal relation means that one phenomenon follows another but not that one is the cause of the other: the only thing we can affirm is that it has always happened this way.

He affirms that beauty is not a quality of the things themselves but only exists in the mind that contemplates them. Beauty is neither a transcendental or innate idea nor a sensory impression that seems to correspond with it. From this point of view, it seems that we can only identify a pleasant feeling, which we can assume that is caused by something beautiful but not that we have known something beautiful as such.”

From perspective, an object is said to be beautiful because certain properties of the object stimulate our sensibility and make us feel its beauty.

Sincerely,