Designer

“ One feels as if the original designer had started on such a gigantic scale that he either had to give up finishing his work proportionately or keep on till it reached the sky,—he wisely chose the former alternative. ”

“ Thus, to the skill of the draughtsman must be added the far-seeing imagination of the designer, which, instead of being content with a hole-and-corner success, involving disgrace to the rest of the page, embraces in its consciousness all the materials available for the beautification of the page as a whole. ”

“ The decorative designer certainly depends largely for freshness of inspiration and suggestion in design and colour upon growing plants and flowers, upon the sight of birds and animals, of the ever-changing sea and sky, and the colours of the landscape. If the sense from which is produced the very elements of decoration thus requires to be kept alive and in health, surely the sense which appreciates the product, which selects and uses, needs also similar access to nature to preserve a healthy tone. ”

“ Below the great painter and sculptor came the trained designer who, formed in the same school as his superiors, did not attempt a poor copy of their masterpieces, but did the same kind of work on simpler lines; just as below the skilled artificer stood the plain artisan whose work was executed more rudely, but by the same genuine processes. ”

“ A wonderful draughtsman and powerful designer, who in all his work shows himself fully alive to beauty of decorative design in the completeness, care, and taste with which the accessories of his pictures and designs are rendered. ”

“ But the moment we speak of this apparatus as a provision intentionally made for sight, we have introduced the idea of a Designer in the strongest sense of the word. Now, it is difficult to think of anything as an example of intelligent arrangement, and at the same time give no hint even to our own thoughts of arranging Intelligence. We can hardly look through a pane of glass and admire the perfect transparency of one surface to the exclusion of the other! ”

“ Although a beautiful designer, he becomes cold and flat in colour, with a coldness and insipidity, indeed, that take us by surprise, appearing in a country where the taste for luminous and brilliant tints was so strongly rooted. ”

“ We may fancy Paley as turning the tables upon us and as saying; “But you too have admitted a designer—you too then must mean a designer with a body and soul, who must be somewhere to be found in space, and who must live in time. ”

“ This power of design rises to higher uses as time goes on, is bent to the interpretation of lofty themes and the expression of deep emotions, but it is in its nature the same power that produced the delicate, ethereal beauty of the reliefs. The infinite fastidiousness of a master designer, constantly reworking and readjusting his design, that every part shall be perfect and that no fold or spray of leafage shall be out of its proper place, never satisfied that his composition is beyond improvement while an experiment remains untried—this is what cost him years of labor. ”

“ And for our work to gain the same sensibility, the same range of appeal, the same human interest, we must employ the same means. We must clothe modern ideas in modern dress; adorn our design with living fancy, and rise to the height of our knowledge and capacities.
Doubtless there is danger to the untrained designer in direct resort to Nature. For the tendency in his or her case is to copy outright, to give us pure crude fact and not to design at all. ”

“ We have seen that in work partaking of a decorative character the principal object of the designer should be to group his figures in a noble and picturesque manner, to attend to his drawing, and if possible to add the charm of agreeable color to his work. ”

“ But whereas the pictorial artist or picture painter carries his own work through to completion, is designer and craftsman in one; in short, the designer for some industrial purpose, unless he is his own craftsman, must make his design also a working drawing to conform to certain strict technical conditions, such as the nature of the material and the method of reproduction, certain limits of size and number of colours to be used and so forth. ”

“ Granted that the designer knows the tools of his trade,—grasps the expressional value of every element with which he has to deal, from the cut of a type to the surface of a binder's cloth,—his task, as we said, is first to know the soul of the book intrusted to him for embodiment ”

“ But it is not so much the activity as the people who are the activity that make either the criticism or glorification of design meaningful. This brings up the identity of the designer in the civilization of illiteracy.
Designers master certain parts of the vast realm of the visual. Some are exquisite in visualizing language: type designers, graphic artists, bookmakers; others, in realizing 3-dimensional space either as product designers, architects, or engineers. Some see design dynamically-clothes live the life of the wearer; gardens change from season to season, year to year ”

“ In all these imitative processes the question of design becomes of the very highest importance, since the material has neither beauty nor intrinsic value in itself; and here, even more than in many other forms of manufacture, the presence and influence of the intelligent designer is most desirable, and should be paramount. ”

“ Such questions ought not to be overlaid with archæological inquiries, or with the information which only profits the designer; though of course it is best that the knowledge of design should be part of the education of the craft. ”

“ The chief scope for symbol and emblem in our time lies in the province of decorative design, which in its highest forms may be regarded as the metre or poetry of art. The designer, like the poet, rejoices in certain limitations, which, while they fix and control his form and treatment, leave him extraordinary freedom in dealing suggestively with themes difficult or impossible to be approached in purely naturalistic form. ”

“ The object of the designer need not be to render a direct imitation of nature; but there is no reason why a textile designer should not use the power at his disposal of suggesting the surface appearance, or the beauties, or characteristics of the object which forms the subject of the design. ”

“ Disposing thus of a man's individuality, some means are essential to convey the thought of the designer into the hand of the worker, and customs have grown and laws have been adopted that will serve as a sort of mental telegraph between these two—laws which govern the flight of the artist's fancy and instruct the artisan in an standing of the designer's purposes. ”

“ The decorative designer will sometimes want to emphasize forms with the utmost force and realism at his command, as in some crisp bit of carving or emphatic pattern, to give point and relief in his scheme of quantities. ”

“ A designer for any class of work should have a knowledge of the technicalities of the material for which he is designing a pattern; at the same time, a very slight knowledge is essentially requisite, provided the sketch be given into proper hands to be worked out. ”

“ So vastly is the demand for wood-engravings every day growing, that nothing is more difficult than to obtain designs, or when obtained to get them cut. Ladies, therefore, who have a genius for design, would soon find their value amongst the publishers; and while the profession of a designer is both elegant and feminine, how much more independent, and much less laborious, it would be than needlework, or the duties and position of a governess. ”

“ When he is a designer, the most successful method of getting a variety of patterns would be for the manufacturer to purchase sketches for ideas and hand them over to his designer, who will be considered to have a thorough knowledge of the practical work, to prepare them to suit the fabrics for which they are intended, perhaps completely altering them, making two or three out of one, or combining two or more to make one pattern if necessary—in fact, using them as material to work from. ”

“ The design of a costume must be considered even more than its materials. A designer is an artist who uses fabric, color, and line to create an impression and to express an idea. He should study the play, and understand its dramatic ideas and moods. If he does this, his costumes will be as expressive, if properly worn, as the words of the actors. ”

“ We asserted the principle that the Designer and Craftsman should be hand in hand, and work head with hand in both cases, so that mere redundancy of ingenious surface ornament on the one hand, or mechanical ingenuity in executive23 skill on the other, should not be considered as ends in themselves, but only as means to ends, neither the one nor the other being tolerable without controlling taste. ”

“ Indeed, it is the possession of this knowledge which mainly distinguishes the industrial designer from the ordinary artist. To determine the best training for such designers is one of the problems of technical education. There are many trades, too, in which the handicraftsman and the designer should be united. This is the case in such industries as silversmith’s and goldsmith’s work. In these and other trades the true artisan is the artist and handicraftsman combined. ”

“ When the exact size is known the designer will fill the spaces at his disposal according to his taste and skill, making his sketches on paper, and, when these are complete, transferring the outlines to the material on which the work is to be done. ”

“ We must prove design before we can infer a designer. ”

“ The more we are able to keep before our minds the place and purpose of any design we have to make, the more we realize the conditions of use and service of which it must be a part, as well as the capacities of the material of which it is to be made; and the more we understand its constructive necessities, the more successful our design is likely to be, and the nearer we shall approach to bridging the unfortunate gulf which too often exists between the designer and the craftsman. ”

“ There are, however, too many missing links between the ordinary art student and the practical designer, between the tasteful person and the leader of fashion, to enable us to prove a close connection of cause and effect in the matter. ”

“ Where on earth to-day can you find a thing done by us designers that an artist will go to look at for love, for the deep desire of enjoyment which makes us visit so many little things of the past, and go far for them? If you can, imagine any painter desiring to note, so as to make them his own by copy, a modern set of moldings, the corner of a modern building. ”

“ The master and a few artificers formerly superintended each piece of work, which, therefore, was never far removed from the designer’s eye. Though accomplished artists are retained by the manufacturers of London, Paris and other capitals, there can no longer be the same relation between the designer and his work. ”

“ The preliminary steps toward surface enrichment should be thought out before they are drawn.
A designer will be materially helped if he devotes a few moments of thought to his design problem before he applies the pencil to the paper. In the end the time given to thinking out his problem will gain for him both increased excellence of design and rapidity of execution, provided his thinking is systematic. ”

“ The foregoing is a rough list of stitches which could be copiously supplemented, but that I am obliged to pass on to another important point, that of design. If needlework is to be looked upon seriously, it is necessary to secure appropriate and practicable designs. Where the worker does not invent for herself, she should at least interpret her designer, just as the designer interprets and does not attempt to imitate nature. ”

“ Beautiful binding, indeed, may display some of the most refined qualities of decorative art in disposition of line and pattern, while it affords in gold tooling another instance of 372 strict limitation of method lending itself to free invention and fancy.
The artist is under the necessity of building up his lines and constructing his forms by the repetition of the impress of certain tools, the most resourceful designer being shown by the decorative use he is able to make of few and simple forms. ”

“ If designing could be taught, all the world would learn: as all the world reads—or calculates. But designing is not to be spelled, nor summed. My men continually come to me, in my drawing class in London, thinking I am to teach them what is instantly to enable them to gain their bread. "Please, sir, show us how to design." "Make designers of us." And you, I doubt not, partly expect me to tell you to-night how to make designers of your Bradford youths. Alas! I could as soon tell you how to make or manufacture an ear of wheat, as to make a good artist of any kind. ”

“ To the modern designer, accustomed as he is to play with what were once words and109 syllables of perhaps vital import, meaning, in the ornament he may be called upon to fashion, apart from its own form or technical purpose, seems, perhaps, a vain or an inessential thing. ”

“ In case the manufacturer has no designer in his place, but only a draughtsman, the sketches must be bought prepared to suit his fabrics, or it would be better to have the complete work done, in many cases, at a designing establishment. ”

“ The designer of patterns for wall papers heretofore has been content to imitate other materials, and adapt the characteristics of the patterns found, say, in silk damask hangings or tapestry, or even imitate the veining of wood, or marble, or tiles; but since the revival of interest in art, the study of its history, and knowledge of style, a new impulse has been given, and patterns are constructed with more direct reference to their beauty, and interest as such, while strictly adapted to the methods of manufacture. ”