Previously, the class touched upon 3 modes of aesthetics in design; function-dominant aesthetics, human-dominant aesthetics and emotion-dominant aesthetics.
Function – dominant Aesthetics
Products that follow function are designed to serve its’ purpose. Living in a modern age where vast permutations of any particular product can be found, function-dominant products retains its normality in which its form and material choices are derived from its function. Such products are usually less emotional. One example is the Stapler.
Human – Dominant Aesthetics
Products that are human-dominant, are designed with the intent to aid in a human issue. Such products, I feel can still bring forth the sense of emotion, but still mainly focus on the function. An example of a human-dominant product is an ‘One-hand’ Industrial staple the fundamental function of the stapler is retained, whilst adding tweaks such as a bigger body to contain the bigger stapler bullets, as well as a gauge to ensure the stapler maintains its straight path. Also, together with the function of the ‘One-Hand’ all ensue the Industrial stapler to be used for the specific purpose of efficiency.
Emotion – Dominant Aesthetics
Emotion-dominant products add an extra touch for the specific user. Many at times, such products make the user conforms to the function. One such example is a MUJI Award 2003 bronze prize winner, the Precise Stapler by Joonhyun Kim from South Korea. Even though the main element for the design of the stapler is to provide accuracy for the user, the whole subtraction of the metal piece, providing the right-angled slot for the paper to be inserted within the staple actually conforms the user to use the stapler in that certain manner/ practise.
FINAL Thoughts
For this exercise, I made use of the Stapler designs for my examples. Honestly I was really confused when attempting to classify the stapler designs into the 3 categories. This actually made me realise how closely interlinked the 3 categories are. Also they are useful in their particular sense as they all serve a particular function for a particular group of target audience. However, each example will probably falter when switched upon the target audience. All in all, I realised the importance of each category of aesthetics.
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