I was perplexed when I first encountered the concept of dominance within 3-dimensional objects. More specifically, I was skeptical that common day objects possessed elements that neatly fall under the categories of Dominant, Subdominant, and Subordinate.
The biggest question that hung in the air was “Why is this important?” and “Why am I even learning about this?” The answer only came to me several weeks later. As I became more comfortable with the idea of dominance, I began to see them more often in everyday objects. More importantly, I realized its visual impact on these objects. Those exhibiting clear D, SD, and SO stood out better and were more aesthetically appealing than those that did not. Everyday objects are designed by people after all, so it would help knowing and differentiating good design and (bad) design.
After understanding the concept more clearly, I realized that the ink bottle that I had brought to class on the first lesson is rather subpar if we were to judge its aesthetic value based only on the dominance of its elements.
To make this more visually striking, perhaps the bottle cap could be altered such that it is of uniform texture – a uniform matte black of the rubber squeezer + matte black plastic for the screw cap (as opposed to the speckled, heavily textured plastic it is now). Disregarding marketing and consumer information purposes, we could reduce the label to just the Bombay logo, perhaps engraved into the glass body to add a third nuance of black into the whole piece.
Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.