Dear list,

for the last few days I have been working on a project for a major European
carrier.

Prior to this I had been reading David Sless' provocative posts on the list
and some of the responses. They
have stuck in my mind. Really got me questioning do we need to be creative
- at all?

It so happens that the airline I am working on has some very provocative
history/imagery that if used in the wrong way
stimulate tensions in the viewer. It is not German either.

For the graphicky folks on the list - the source is the real deal
graphically.

The more I dug up on this subject the more I realised how much the design
world has changed since 9/11.

For me now, that is when the last century ended. In many ways it is what
that century deserved. The sadness is overwhelming.

Every time there is big tension and war we have a shift visually. And now
what a time of change?
The Islamic world is splitting in two, the European Union is shown for its
true frailties and so on.

Even the military bastion of the last 50 years - NATO -  is at odds with
itself.

And in amongst this airline research I came across this snippet that shows
how much art (& design) symbolizes what is going on.

"In an act with extraordinary historical resonance, United Nations
officials covered up a tapestry reproduction of Pablo Picasso's anti-war
mural
"Guernica" during US Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5
presentation of the American case for war against Iraq." -

War and change affects art & design (and all of us really) so profoundly.

War created Dadaism...

Dada - Nihilistic movement in the arts that flourished chiefly in France,
Switzerland, and Germany from about 1916  .....engendered by disgust for
bourgeois values
and despair over World War I.

And art has helped praise war?

Manifesto of Futurism - F.T. Marinetti
   1. We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and
      fearlessness.
   2. Courage, audacity, and revolt will be essential elements of our
      poetry.
   3. Up to now literature has exalted a pensive immobility, ecstasy, and
      sleep. We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the
      racer's stride,
    the mortal leap, the punch and the slap.
   4. We affirm that the world's magnificence has been enriched by a new
      beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with
      great pipes,
    like serpents of explosive breath?a roaring car that seems to ride on
      grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
   5. We want to hymn the man at the wheel, who hurls the lance of his
      spirit across the Earth, along the circle of its orbit.
   6. The poet must spend himself with ardor, splendor, and generosity, to
      swell the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
   7. Except in struggle, there is no more beauty. No work without an
      aggressive character can be a masterpiece. Poetry must be conceived
      as a violent attack on unknown forces,
    to reduce and prostrate them before man.
   8. We stand on the last promontory of the centuries!... Why should we
      look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of
      the Impossible? Time and Space
    died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have
      created eternal, omnipresent speed.
   9. We will glorify war?the world's only hygiene?militarism, patriotism,
      the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth
      dying for, and scorn for woman.
   10.      We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every
      kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or
      utilitarian cowardice.
   11.      We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and
      by riot; we will sing of the multicolored, polyphonic tides of
      revolution in the modern capitals;
   we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards
      blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that
      devour smoke-plumed serpents;
    factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges
      that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with
      a glitter of knives; adventurous
    steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose wheels
      paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by
      tubing; and the
    sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like
      banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.

If we recall the way Futurism, dynamism, and the machine age have become
enmeshed with what many could consider as industrial design and product
design - this manifesto
scares the h@#l out of me.

Is this the true roots of what I work in?

And all this thanks to David's early post on this list.

This work will be quite different than the standard project.

Thanks.



Glenn Johnson


Industrial Design Manager





Industrial Design Studio, B/E Aerospace Inc.


1455 Fairchild Rd. Winston-Salem NC 27105-4588 USA


Tel. (1) 336 744 3143 Fax. (1) 336 744 6934


http://www.beaerospace.com/