5. Aesthetics
Modernism has relegated the idea of beauty to function, so “form follows function”. A commitment to “beauty” is seen as problematic. That design should not be about “beautifying” is a common statement. However, this very discourse of modernism has concealed that modernism is an aesthetic in itself!
5.1 A first assessment of what I love and hate
We as designers deal with aesthetic judgements all the time. So it's important to be aware of our own aesthetic biases.
I ordered the posters into two extremes: I love it and I hate it. It seems to me that I like posters that are more "correct" from a design point of view. However, I don't like scary and gloomy things, so if designs that are "correctly" designed cause negative emotions, I can't put them in the "I love it" category.
5.2 Taste and distinction
I will have a closure look to the four posters on the extreme ends of the diagram.
5.3 Detailed exploration of my aesthetic preferences
5.4 Sorting out the good and bad from the beautiful and ugly
I think my green dancing monster poster is a good poster. In his or her work, the designer did not make any serious mistakes. The title is read quickly and clearly. The illustration helps to understand the message. The poster conveys the meaning of the event well and gets straight to the right audience.
And finally, I think my taste is quite trivial, I like good posters and I don't like bad ones (except for the story where I don't like too gloomy posters, which I described above).
5.5 Style
In a society where everyone is educated to a certain lifestyle, audiences can be reached out to by signaling styles. I think using the example of this poster, we can very well see how the desire to reflect a certain style narrows the target audience, perhaps even inexpediently narrows it.
I think, the target group for this poster is young, intelligent and conscious parents (perhaps even designers) who want to instill good taste in their children. They go to therapy, yoga, and take the child to events at the Kunsthalle, (in my opinion, one of the most modern hipster places in Frankfurt). Is this poster really interesting and captivating for children? It's an tricky question and I will talk about it later.
