The New York Times, once a newspaper, occasionally publishes magazines devoted to "style" and "design." These are useful guides to the deterioration of our civilization. For example, the cover of the Spring 2011 "Style" magazine and the magazine editor's effusions about it are wonderful demonstrations of how far "dumbing down" now extends. http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2011/04/01/t-magazine/design-issue/index.html?ref=style
The magazine cover shows a messy children's playroom newly located in what was once the basement kitchen of a renovated 40-room Georgian manor house set on 29 acres in Somerset, England (now occupied in its entirety by an "IT" couple and their four children.) The editor of this magazine, one Sally Singer, gushes that "[w]hat we saw in that room was imagination, spontaneity, persistence (all those open-ended projects) and heart. "We saw, in essence, the underpinnings of great design."
I suppose that, depending on one's state of intoxication or mystical delusion, one can see the underpinnings of anything anywhere. All I saw on the cover was a messy children's playroom with enough objects on the floor to make walking through it at night without a light a dangerous undertaking. The only judgment I can make based on this picture is that the children are not being taught to keep their playthings in order.
Treating this example of disorder and wastefulness as a precursor of great design is sheer nonsense and a perversion of the higher principles of design. (I will touch on these as time goes by.) This wretched cover does however, at the very least, give us a good picture of the standards now prevailing in this magazine's perverse view of the world of style and design.
A nice footnote to the lack of true style which pervades this magazine is the signature of the editor to her puffy introduction. (Page 14 or screen 15 of the link above) She signs it with two loopy flourishes which bear no resemblance to the initials of her name or to any permutation of the letter "s" known to Western civilization. This signature "design" conveys volumes about a loss of contact with honest communication and a glorification of empty "style" over substance. Yes, the arts of handwriting analysis and design analysis are not dead!
The magazine cover shows a messy children's playroom newly located in what was once the basement kitchen of a renovated 40-room Georgian manor house set on 29 acres in Somerset, England (now occupied in its entirety by an "IT" couple and their four children.) The editor of this magazine, one Sally Singer, gushes that "[w]hat we saw in that room was imagination, spontaneity, persistence (all those open-ended projects) and heart. "We saw, in essence, the underpinnings of great design."
I suppose that, depending on one's state of intoxication or mystical delusion, one can see the underpinnings of anything anywhere. All I saw on the cover was a messy children's playroom with enough objects on the floor to make walking through it at night without a light a dangerous undertaking. The only judgment I can make based on this picture is that the children are not being taught to keep their playthings in order.
Treating this example of disorder and wastefulness as a precursor of great design is sheer nonsense and a perversion of the higher principles of design. (I will touch on these as time goes by.) This wretched cover does however, at the very least, give us a good picture of the standards now prevailing in this magazine's perverse view of the world of style and design.
A nice footnote to the lack of true style which pervades this magazine is the signature of the editor to her puffy introduction. (Page 14 or screen 15 of the link above) She signs it with two loopy flourishes which bear no resemblance to the initials of her name or to any permutation of the letter "s" known to Western civilization. This signature "design" conveys volumes about a loss of contact with honest communication and a glorification of empty "style" over substance. Yes, the arts of handwriting analysis and design analysis are not dead!
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