Yoad David Luxembourg wrote:
—snip—
"Whatever the activity of design is, it relies heavily on human cognitive
ability..." and now there is this angle of the age of the colour blue.
One of the biggest problems a designer faces is the fact that the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis still holds ... and it is never more clear than when
trying to argue with a young design student, whose only way out, often, is
to fall back to the position of "oh, but that is only your opinion" -
completely missing the point that, if you do not have the words (sentences,
concepts) in your language, then you cannot express yourself clearly, or
worse, you communicate the "wrong" information, as Benjamin Whorf found out
when investigating why so many factories were burning down - the "culprits"
were the workers who flicked their "used" (read "safe") matches into
"empty" (read "safe") drums that previously contained volatile chemicals of
the "go-boom" kind.
As a designer one can also realise from this example that "language" has
less to do with the actual words (in your language) than with the need to
communicate - even via sign language (tourist in foreign country trying to
get directions to sites of interest).
The minute the listener "gets it" - i.e., when you understand what the
other is asking - then an English speaker can communicate with a Spanish
speaker, or at least give it a good try.
Whatever the activity of living is, its quality and meaning relies heavily
on human cognitive ability ... to communicate via design is as easy and as
difficult as trying to teach someone how to bake bread. Everything depends
on the context within which the communication is taking place - and
remember, "only communications can communicate" (Niklas Luhmann).
As for the colour blue - that does not exist, young or old. Cyan exists,
and so does process yellow and magenta: all the other "colours" we see in
nature and try to imitate is always a mixture of the process colours, and
unless we have the exact formula, we cannot speak of "blue" but have to
rely on "words" such as - oh, you know, that heavy darkish blue that your
Dad once painted the garage ... trying to establish context, which, again,
might not need exact "words" (trying to explain the temperature of the fire
in forging Japanese sword blades, the master craftsman said, the fire needs
to be the exact colour of the rising sun).
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: also known as linguistic relativity - think of
innuendo, of propaganda, of gossip, all examples of deliberate linguistic
relativity ("oh, but I never said that!") - or think of genuine
word-mistaken identity, which can happen in one social group between
different ages, between different social groups even though they speak the
same "language", and between one group speaking English as a first language
and a second group speaking English as a second language. This last example
happens often in South Africa when people think in Afrikaans but speak (or
think they do) in English. The end result is relative to the
context-of-understanding of the speaker but not necessarily of the listener
- which can lead to the silly question "Can an English designer do work for
a Spanish client?" - the answer can be silly or quite serious.
Johann
On 7 July 2016 at 02:26, Gunnar Swanson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > On Jul 6, 2016, at 8:08 PM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > Blue is newer than you think perhaps.
>
> Or the problem is that blue is proprietary:
>
>
> http://www.lokidesign.net/journal/2016/2/22/the-propaganda-of-pantone-colour-and-subcultural-sublimation
>
>
> Gunnar
>
> Gunnar Swanson
> East Carolina University
> graphic design program
>
> http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Gunnar Swanson Design Office
> 1901 East 6th Street
> Greenville NC 27858
> USA
>
> http://www.gunnarswanson.com
> [log in to unmask]
> +1 252 258-7006
>
>
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--
Dr. Johann van der Merwe
Independent Design Researcher
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