Modern Design

Everything you wanted to know about Modern Design - its origins and heroes from the 19th century till now. Explanation and inspiration.

Researched, assembled and designed by Alex Brown:
alexbrown.net

1. Modern Design
A hundred years of
designed products
The colours the materials
the shapes & the images
The Designers
The Designs
The Ideas

2. 19
th
Century Taste (1)
Nostalgia, sentimentality & revivalism
(Medieval or Celtic)
Above: Celtic Revival brooch 1852 Awakening Conscience
Holman Hunt 1850

3. 19
th
Century Taste (2)
Melancholy, myth, magic and
Medievalism in the face of the
brutal industrialization of society.

4. 19
th
Century Taste (3)
Sentimentality and bad taste so often
occur together. Proudly displayed
furniture and Rossetti’s Proserpine 1880

5. 19
th
Century Taste (4)
Above: William Morris Arts and Craft’s
interior Wightwick House 1880s -
Simplified ‘Gothic revival’ ‘Dolce’
by Holman Hunt 1866

6. Art Nouveau (1)
Sinuous & linear. Art Nouveau in the hands of a master,
brilliantly sophisticated.
Above: C.R. Mackintosh: Hill House Glasgow 1901
above right: Mackintosh: doors Willow tearoom 1903

7. Art Nouveau (2)
Armchair 1901 Lighting 1901 Tearooms 1902

Designer: Charles Rennie Mackintosh Glasgow

8. Art Nouveau (3)
Above: Lighting – House 1902
Right: Seat – Exhibition 1917


Designer: Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1869-1928)

9. Early Modern Design (1) 1920s
Fauvist Painting 1917 Cubist Painting 1921 De Stijl Chair 1917

The various faces of the Modern Movement
in painting and design. Compare these with late
19
th
century only 20 years earlier

10. Early Modern Design (2) The 1920s
Marcel Breuer chair – 1925 Modern Interior – 1925
Stripped of Decoration and rejecting historical
associations Modern designers revolutionize the design
of objects and space

11. Early Modern Design (3) The 1920s
The key Modern Building:
Left: Ville Savoie – roof patio - Le Corbusier 1929
Right: Ville Savoie – Le Corbusier 1929
The key early Modern building all the theory
combined into one building

12. Early Modern Design (4)
Top: House at Garches Le Corbusier 1927
Top right: Avions Sports 1923
Right: Al Jolson in first ‘talking picture’ 1927

13. Early Modern Design (5) The 1920s
The Barcelona Pavilion by Mies van der
Rohe 1929
Like Le Corbusier’s Ville Savoie it sums up all that was to
happen in architecture in the next 50s years
Form NOT Functionalism

14. Early Modern Design (7) – De Stijl
• Cubic
• Forms
• planes
• primary
• colours
•
• Schroder House 1923 Rietveldt

J.P.Oud - De Stijl Poster

Piet Mondrian Paintings 1920s

15. Early Modern Design (6) The 1930s
Aalto chair 1931
Smooth integrated
Shapes display the
virtues of technical
and aesthetic
Functionalism
All complex issues
resolved into a single
‘significant’ form
RCA phonograph 1930s Sports car & UK
1937 Hoover Moderne building

16. War Years 1939-1945
Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin
All energies and industries are
directed to the war economies
Mussolini and Hitler

17. End of World War II
Top: Red Army takes Berlin 1945
Top right: End of the war in Asia as
Atomic bombs dropped on Japan
Right: The atomic bomb itself

18. Movies of the times

Citizen Kane 1941 Gone with the Wind 1939 Casablanca 1942

Hollywood during the war years

19. Movies of the Times
Searchers Gentlemen prefer Blondes Rebel without a Cause
1956 1953 1955

20. Post War Design Influences
Domestic design Jukebox design Coca Cola fronts Time
Together with Hollywood, American
consumerism becomes the dominant
factor in the new post war economies

21. Corporate Design Culture The 1950s
Above: McDonald’s 1955
Right: Lever House, New York 1951

While Europe and Asia recovered
from the war, The U.S. built a new
consumer & corporate culture

22. International Modern Design (1) The 1950s
Gio Ponti bedroom suite 1951 Charles Eames wire chairs 1951
Beyond simple functionalism to a concern for ‘significant form’.
Good design becomes part of consumerist retail imagery.

23. International Modern Design (2) 1950s
• Abstract Expressionist Painting plus
• designer furniture in a glass and steel
• tower represent the stereotype of
• corporate good taste.
Franz Kline
Charles Eames Arne Jacobsen
1956 1956

24. International Modern Design (3) The 1950s
Cadillac Eldorado 1959 Tailfins

Baroque Consumerism
extravagant styling as a sales factor

25. International Modern Design (4) The 1950s
Chapel Ronchamps Le Corbusier 1952
The two sides of the international style:
European: concrete, textured & plastic
American: Steel, glass, cubic, grid
Seagram building 1957
New York

26. International Modern Design (5) The 1950s
Vastly Different
Styling and
Design Concepts
Between U.S.
& European
cars due to
cultural and
economic
differences


above: the Mini 1950s the Fiat 500
below: Plymouth 1950s 1950s

27. The Movies of the Times
Above: Easy Rider 1969
Dir: Dennis Hopper
Right: The Graduate 1967
Dir: Mike Nichols

28. Pop Influences on Design (1) –The
1960s70s
Sgt. Pepper Band 1967 Soft Toilet 1966 Marilyn 1962
The Beatles Claus Oldenburg Andy Warhol
A new art & design consciousness emerges out of an ironic
analysis of popular consumer culture. It is then applied to the
design of products. The beginnings of Postmodernism

29. Pop Influences on Design
(2) – The 1960s70s
Pop Art uses
Popular and
Familiar
Consumer items
as subject
Matter, like
Modern Design
Style, irony
and retro.

Hockney and Lichenstein
above. Right: Ironic statement
on Consumerism and pop music

30. The New Design Culture (1) – 1960s
Vespa scooters 1960s Loungers Joe Colombo 1967
Tactile, colourful & fun ideas from
pop consumer culture entered the
Normally ‘serious’ design areas of
architecture, furniture, product Design.

Colombo loungers 1967

31. The new Design Culture (2) - The 1960s
Above: Lounger Archizoom 1967
Right: Sottsass cabinet 1967

32. The new Design culture (3) The 1960s
• Left: Yale University Art
Museum, New Haven Ct
Louis Kahn 1969
Right:Isamu Noguchi
light sculptures 1960s

33. The New Design Culture (4) – The 1960s
Top: Los Clubes, Mexico, Barragan 1966
Right: Urban graphics, U.K. 1960s
Colour
invades the designs of the 1960s

34. The New Design Culture
(5) The 1960s-1970s
Album covers had become a powerful
new art form. They show the influence
of Eastern design and philosophies

Jimi Hendrix and Cream album covers

35. The New Design Culture (6) – The 1960s
• Top Left: Carnaby St. London fashion
• Top: Model Jean Shrimpton
• Top right: Fashion group – mini skirts
• Left: Male fashion history 1950s to 1990s
• London becomes fashion capital of the

• world & British pop music takes over.

36. The New Design Culture (7) The 1970s
Right and Left: the powerful statements of the PUNK style
In the middle ‘prettified’ post hippie styling

The 1970s saw a mix of stylistic possibilities in all design fields

37. The New Design Culture (8) – The 1970s
Late 1970s fashion statements – style is powerful but clean’
Retro as usual –

BUT the powerful influence of the punks is still there to be
seen!

38. The Postmodern Era
1970s-1980s
Elements of shock, retro, Pop
art, clashes of colour and of
normal design associations

The armchair joke An ‘historicist’ office building
Portland Building, Michael Graves

39. The Postmodern Era
1970s ++
Shock and Historicist design
The settee materials and shape collide Il Palazzo Hotel, Japan
associations of Renaissance

40. The Postmodern Era 1970s ++
A new range of ‘postmodern’ tones
Provide a new vocabulary of design
Toshiyuki Kita wink chairs Postmodern Fashion

41. The Postmodern Era 1970s++
Michael Graves Postmodern Chair set 1980s
For various tastes and emotions
Postmodernism means plurality of choice

42. The Postmodern Era
1970s++
Everything was now possible –
1) Body Shop green Design
2) Minimalist interiors &
3) Historicist
Museums
With eclectic
Pop colour
detailing.

43. The Postmodern Era
1970s++
Morphosis Lighting Design


Lounger by Shin Takamatsu

Disney L.A. HQ by Isaozaki

44. The Postmodern Era
1970s++++
Office Building Mexico: Legorretta
Shop Japan, Yasuo Kondo Kirin Beer HQ Osaka,
Takamatsu

45. The Postmodern Era
1970s +++
1980s


Yuppie symbols of wealth and confidence

46. The Postmodern Era
1980s++
Minimalist spaces, hi tech
imagery – also a symbol of
good design taste in the 1980s

47. The Movies 1970s-1980s
E.T. Star Wars Godfather I
Dir: Steven Spielberg Dir: George Lucas Dir: Francis Coppola

48. The Movies 1970s-1980s
Raging Bull 1980 Apocalypse Now 1979 Cabaret 1972
Dir: Martin Scorsese Dir: Francis Coppola Dir: Bob Fosse

49. The Postmodern Era
1980s-1990s
•
• Not particularly for sitting on -
• these pieces of furniture show
• postmodern humour,
• sensuality & sense of form

50. The Postmodern Era 1980s-1990s
Humour, horror, sci-fi & technical
sophistication open new frontiers in
furniture design – sculptural works
Lounger 1986: Mark Lawson

51. The Postmodern Era 1980s-
1990s
Above: Guggenheim Museum Spain, Gehry 1990s
Top right: Chest of Drawers, Droog, 1991
Soft ‘chaotic’ shapes

52. The Postmodern Era 1980s-1990s
Left & Right: Dior fashion by John Galliano 1999
Centre: ‘Ebb’ graphic art by Amy Jenkins
Images of beauty and of tragedy

53. The Postmodern Era 1980s- 1990s
New Graphics by Muller Hess 1998
Mask by P. Treacy 1992

54. The Postmodern Era
1980s-1990s
Above: Lou Reed album cover
by Stefan Sagmeister, 1996
‘Mona leo’ by Schwartz
1998

55. The Postmodern
Era 1990s- 2000s
Above: Dressing table – pseudo-gothic
Above right: Chair by Verner Panton1999
Right: Chair by Bengtsson, 1999

56. The Postmodern Era 1990s-
2000s
• Left: M-M
• Invitation Card
• 2002
•
•
•
• Rings by Azagury-Patridge 2002 ‘Muff Daddy’lounger 2002
• by Seymour

57. The Postmodern
Era 1990s-2000s
• Product Styling
•
•
Above: Mini Cooper with graphics
Paul Smith 1999


Apple computer product
styling
J. Ive, 1999
above: Falcon Jet styling
graphics, Newson 1999

58. The End
Thank you
for your attention
and interest
I hope you have enjoyed
the talk and perhaps have
learned something
See you again
I hope