I've been a Bridgestone and Rivendell rider since...well, a while ago. I find the aesthetic of things that work very interesting and even when I try not to form an opinion about an item before its function is understood, it has the ability to project such through design. By that power, the designer has a very important role in the life of a design, manufacturing and life cycle of a product. Interestingly, an anatomy and physiology professor once told me to remember structure and function; each provides the cues to the other, if you know one you can predict the other. Works with design and function too.
My architect grandfather had similar feelings about buildings and began forming my critical eye at a young age. What I find really interesting has been my accumulated experiences and the way that they create the values that I see in designs. More importantly they make clear what I am not attracted to, desire or trust to function in their capacity. Maybe a thread common to RBW fans and readers of this group. This too explains why I prefer bike frames with the visual cues of lugged steel, am repelled by the Ultegra 6800 cranks and have mechanical love for the normally aspirated in-line six automobile engine. Here,The Carnegie Museum of Art currently has an exhibit about Peter Muller-Munk and his work in industrial design. They offer a captivating view of the back story of a designer, Muller-Munk, as important. He trained academically as a silversmith in Berlin and made waves with his work at Tiffany's but sought to produce designs attainable in the middle class marketplace. His designs and products in that effort were popular items without his name attaching importance or value, to the extent that much of the catalog of exhibits were acquired on eBay. As an industrial designer he felt well placed in this town when he arrived to staff the new discipline at then Carnegie Tech. As he expanded into providing design he said that if you design in particular materials, you ought to be where they make them which he did and produced icons of design in a volume and familiarity of which I was dumbfounded. The discipline of design can meet the needs of the already qualified user of items without distancing them, yet the ability to draw attention of others who may be well served with the same item in the same way, but brought into that realization of function by the aesthetic. Bicycles have overt enough visual mechanical functions that design can provide or promote that impact...or distract by pointless adornment. All in the eye of the desired audience. Andy Cheatham Pittsburgh On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 7:10:42 PM UTC-5, Surlyprof wrote: > > For those of you who don’t know me, in addition to wanting a Rivendell > bicycle for years, owning a Hillborne for a year or two and being a member > of this group for over a year, I am also a professor of Industrial Design. > This semester I have been teaching my course entitled, “Design and > Meaning”. The goal of the course is to prompt our students to explore > various roles that meaning plays in the industrial design profession. A > portion of the time we look at the more artistic side of design and how > designers express ideas using industrial design as a medium for > expression. Another aspect of the class covers semiotics and semantics and > how designers can utilize form to communicate function. The third topic of > the course deals with meaning that people associate with and attach to the > built environment that surrounds them. As one of the lectures, I’ve been > trying to pull together a lecture about RBW. It seems to me that there are > interesting connections between RBW, Grant’s ideas and meaning for many of > us who own Rivendell bikes and accessories, belong to this group and/or the > Facebook group, and believe in a cycling lifestyle that may veer from > current mainstream bicycle culture. This is where my question lies… How > do you connect meaning (however you interpret that) with RBW, Grant’s > writings, bicycles in general and the design of bikes and other goods at > RBW (as well as B,B&H)? Are there design choices made at RBW that boosts > that sense of meaning? > > > Rather than presenting the students with just my take on that subject, I > thought I'd solicit the thoughts of group members. I’d be happy to field > your thoughts via private responses but, if everyone is OK with this as a > topic of open discussion, I think it might be a fun one to be shared in the > group forum. Also, this is intended only for a course > lecture/presentation and, even in that limited audience of 24 students, I > will do all I can to protect every individual’s anonymity. If this grows > into something particularly interesting worth publishing somewhere, I would > want to communicate with contributors before publishing anything anywhere. > > > So, there it is… any thoughts? > > John > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
