The Creator‘s Appreciation

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I recently chatted with a friend who teaches at MIT His field is now very popular, and application forms from soon to become graduate students flood him every year Most of them seem very smart, "he said What I'm not sure is whether they have taste

Appreciation You don't often hear this word now However, we still need the concept behind it, no matter what people call it What my friend means is that he hopes that students are not only good technical personnel, but also able to use their technical knowledge to design beautiful things

Mathematicians call excellent work "beautiful", just as scientists, engineers, musicians, architects, designers, writers, and painters, whether in the past or present, use "beauty" to describe works Is it a coincidence that they use the same adjective, or is there some overlap in what they say? If there is overlap, can we use discoveries about beauty in one field to find another?

For us designers, these are not just theoretical issues If there is indeed something called beauty, we must be able to recognize it We need good taste to make good things Instead of viewing beauty as an empty abstraction, let's consider it as a practical question: How do you make good things?

If you mention taste now, many people will tell you that 'taste is subjective' They actually feel this way, so they think so When they like something, they don't know why Perhaps it's because it's beautiful, or maybe their mother has the same thing, or they saw a movie star have the same thing in a magazine, or they know it's expensive Their thinking is in a state of unquestioned and arbitrary chaos

Most people have been encouraged from an early age to let this kind of freedom be left in an untested state If you make fun of your brother painting a person's skin green on a picture book, your mother may say things like 'you like your way, he likes his way'

Your mother doesn't want to teach you important aesthetic theories at this moment, she just wants you two to stop fighting

Just like many half truths that adults tell us, this matter contradicts everything else they say After repeatedly telling you that "taste is just a personal preference", they took you to the museum and told you that you should use Dim sum because Leonardo da Vinci was a great artist

What flashed through the child's mind at this moment? What does he mean by 'great artist'? After years of indoctrination that 'everyone likes to do things their own way', he is unlikely to directly conclude that a great artist is one whose works are better than others In his Ptolemaic worldview, a more likely conclusion is that great artists are beneficial to you, just as broccoli is said to be beneficial to the human body in books

Saying that taste is a personal preference is a good way to avoid arguments The problem is, it's not true When you start designing things, you will feel this

No matter what job people do, they naturally want to do better Football players want to win the game, and the CEO wants to increase revenue Doing better in work makes people feel happy and proud However, if your job is design and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to do your job better If taste is only a personal preference, then everyone is perfect: no matter what you like, there's no need to say more

Just like any job, when you continuously design objects, you will achieve better results Your taste will change And just like anyone who gets better at work, you know you're also making progress If that's the case, your original taste is not only different from now, but also worse than now To hell with the axiom that taste cannot be wrong

The current prevalence of relativism may hinder your thinking about appreciation, even if your own appreciation is developing But if you face reality and acknowledge that, at least for you, there are good designs and bad designs, then you can start studying good designs carefully How has your taste changed? When you make a mistake, think about what made you make that mistake? What have others learned from design?

Once you start thinking about these issues, you will be surprised to find that the concept of beauty is interconnected in many different fields The same principle of perfect design has repeatedly appeared in front of people

Good design is simple From mathematics to painting, you can hear it In mathematics, it means that a shorter proof is often better Especially axioms, the less the better In the field of programming, the same principle applies For architects and designers, this means that beauty should rely on carefully selected structural elements, rather than excessive surface decoration Similarly, in the field of painting, a still life painting that has been carefully observed and solidly copied is often more interesting than a flashy but mindless painting (such as a lace collar) In the field of writing, it means simply saying what you want to say

When you are forced to do something simple, it indicates that you are facing practical problems If you cannot give up decoration, you must give up essence

Good design is eternal Every proof in mathematics is permanent unless it is incorrect What does Hardy mean by saying, 'There is no permanent place in the world to accommodate ugly mathematics'? His meaning is the same as Kelly Johnson's: ugly things cannot be the best solution There must be a better way, and eventually someone will discover it

The goal of eternity is one way to discover the best answer: if you can imagine others surpassing you, you'd better do it yourself Some of the greatest masters did so well in this area that they left little room for later generations The sculptors after Douler had to live in his shadow

Strangely, if you want to create something that attracts future humans, one way is to try to attract past humans It's hard to guess what the future will be like, but we can be certain that the future will be like the past, without caring about current fashion Therefore, if you can create something that attracts contemporary and 1500 year old people, it is highly likely to attract 2500 year old humans

Good design solves the right problem A typical (cooking) stove has four fire outlets, forming a square with each switch controlling them How do you arrange these switches? The simplest answer is to line them up But this is not the answer to the question Switches are for people to use, and if you line them up, unfortunately chefs have to stop and think about which switch controls which fire outlet every time A better way is to arrange it into a square like a fire vent

Many bad designs are diligent but misguided In the mid-20th century, there was a trend of using sans serif fonts These fonts are indeed closer to pure basic glyphs But this is not the problem you want to solve in the text It is more important for letters to be easily recognized Although it resembles a Victorian style, the lowercase letter g of Times Roman is easily distinguished from the lowercase letter y

Problems can be solved or improved In the software field, a difficult problem can usually be replaced by an equivalent and easier to solve problem Physics has developed faster because the problem it aims to solve has become predicting the behavior of observable things, rather than reconciling it with classical works

Good design is inspiring Jane Austen's novels have almost no description, not telling you what everything looks like. She tells stories so well that you can imagine the scene yourself Similarly, inspiring paintings are usually more attractive than those created by combining them Everyone who has seen the Mona Lisa has his own story about her

The embodiment of this principle in the field of architecture or design is that buildings or objects should allow you to freely use them: for example, a good building can serve as a background for people living here to live any life they want, rather than living as if executing an architect's program

In the software field, it means that you should give users some basic elements that can be freely combined like assembly toys In mathematics, it means that a proof that can serve as the foundation of many new works is preferable to a proof that is difficult but cannot lead to any new discoveries In the field of science, generally speaking, the amount quoted is a rough indicator of one's own value

Good design is often a bit comical This is not always correct But Durer's carving, Saarinen's womb char, pantheon, and the original Porsche 911 all seem a bit comical to me Godel's incomplete theorem is like a prank

I think this is because humor is related to power Having a sense of humor is powerful: to maintain a sense of humor is to laugh at misfortune, and to lose a sense of humor is to be hurt by it Therefore, the sign of strength, or at least expertise, is not to take things too seriously Confidence will make you appear to adopt a relaxed attitude towards the entire process Just like Hitchcock in his movies, Bruegel in his paintings, and Shakespeare in his plays

Good design doesn't have to be funny, but it's hard to imagine that something without a sense of humor would be good design

Good design is difficult Take a look at people who have achieved great things, and one thing is common: they have worked hard before If you don't work hard, you may be wasting your time

Difficult problems require great effort Difficult mathematical proofs require genius solutions, and they are often fascinating The same goes for the engineering industry

When you climb a mountain, you will take all unnecessary things out of your backpack An architect who wants to build a house in a difficult location or with only a small budget will find that he must make elegant designs Popular and flashy things can only be left aside

Not all efforts are good Pain also has its pros and cons You want the pain of running, not the pain of standing on a nail. Difficult problems may be beneficial for designers, while difficult customers and unreliable materials are not

Traditionally, the highest position in the art field was reserved for figure painting Tradition has a reason, not because figure painting leaves an impression in our minds, while other kinds of painting do not We are so good at observing faces that we force those who paint them to work tirelessly to satisfy us If you draw a tree five degrees off the branch, no one will notice If you draw the human eye five degrees off, everyone will notice

When the Bauhaus school adopted Sullivan's "form follows function," they meant that form should follow function And if the functionality is difficult enough, the form must also follow because there is no room for error Wild animals are beautiful because they have a difficult life

A good design looks easy Just like excellent athletes, great designers make people feel that design is easy Usually, this is a manifestation After several revisions, there will be a catchy article to read

In the technology world, some of the greatest discoveries seem so simple that you would say to yourself, I also want to get them The discoverer is qualified to answer this question: Why didn't you (think of it)?

Some of Leonardo da Vinci's portrait paintings are only a few strokes You gaze at these paintings and think to yourself, all you need to do is draw these eight or nine lines in the correct positions, and then a masterpiece will be created Yes, but you must draw them in exactly the right position A slight deviation will make the entire painting fail

Line drawing requires near perfection, so in fact it is the most difficult visual medium In mathematical terms, it is a closed solution Less excellent artists solve the same problem by gradually approaching One reason why children around the age of ten give up painting is that they are determined to draw like adults and try to draw a face for the first time a head-on blow!

In many fields, it is easy to associate it with practice Perhaps practice training you to use your subconscious to complete tasks that you need to use your consciousness to complete In some cases, you train your body precisely Professional pianists press keys faster than signals transmitted by their brains to their hands After a period of training, painters can transmit visual perception from the eyes to the hands, such as conditioned reflexes

When it comes to a person 'entering a state of transformation', I think they mean that the spinal cord controls the body, hesitates less, and liberates the consciousness to think about more difficult problems

Good design uses symmetry I think symmetry may only be one way to achieve simplicity, but it is important and worth mentioning separately The widespread use of it in nature is a good sign

There are two types of symmetry: repetition and recursion Recursion refers to repeating at a sub level, like the veins of a leaf

Symmetry is no longer popular in some fields as a rebound from previous overuse Architects began to consciously use asymmetry during the Victorian era, and by the 1920s, asymmetry became a clear prerequisite for modernist architecture But even such buildings are only asymmetrical on the central axis, and there are many small areas that are symmetrical

There is symmetry at all levels in writing, from phrases in sentences to the structure of the novel The same goes for music and painting Mosaic paintings composed of the same particles (and some of Cezanne's paintings) have a special visual impact The combination of symmetry has produced some of the most unforgettable works: the birth of Adam and American Gothic churches

Recursion is particularly useful in mathematics and engineering Induction is surprisingly concise A software problem that can be solved recursively is almost certainly the best solution Part of the reason why the Eiffel Tower is noteworthy is that it is recursive: one tower is stacked on top of another

The danger of symmetry, especially repetition, is that it may replace thinking

Good design imitates nature It is better to say that nature has spent billions of years exploring solutions to problems than to say that imitating nature has fundamental benefits If your answer imitates nature, that's a good sign

Copying is not cheating No one would deny that stories should be like life Finding inspiration from life is also a magic weapon in painting, although its task is often misunderstood The goal is not to simply make a note, the point is that it gives you something worth pondering: when your eyes are fixed on an object, your hands will do more interesting work

Imitation also plays a role in the field of engineering Ships have had a spine and reinforcing tendons for a long time, like the chest of an animal In some cases, we have to wait for more

Now that we have powerful computing power, we can not only imitate the results of nature, but also simulate its methods Genetic algorithms allow us to create things that are too complex to design under normal conditions

Good design is redesign The likelihood of getting things right the first time is very low Experts expect to throw away some early works, and they have made plans for changes in the plan

Throwing away a work requires confidence You must think this way, there will be more results to come For example, when people first start learning painting, they are unwilling to redraw the bad parts They feel lucky to have done this step, and if they redo it, it may be even worse So they convinced themselves that the painting wasn't that bad, really - in fact, maybe it should be done that way

It's really dangerous to persuade oneself in this way; It is better to make mistakes in order to cultivate a spirit of dissatisfaction In Leonardo da Vinci's sketches, it often takes five or six attempts to accurately locate a line Behind the distinctive Porsche 911 is a clumsy prototype In Wright's original Guggenheim design, the right half was a pyramid shaped building (ziggurat), which he inverted to its current form

Making mistakes is normal Don't view mistakes as disasters, make them easy to verify and fix Leonardo da Vinci invented sketching to some extent, allowing painting to withstand more load and exploration There are fewer software errors in developing source code because it acknowledges the possibility of making mistakes

If the medium can make changes easier, it is helpful When oil paint replaced egg paint in the 15th century, painters began to be able to handle difficult themes such as portrait painting, because unlike egg paint, oil paint can be mixed and covered

A good design can be replicated The attitude towards replication usually takes a detour Beginners start imitating before they understand it; Then he consciously attempted to be original; Finally, he realized that correctness is more important than originality

Ignorant imitation is almost the secret to bad design If you don't know where your ideas come from, you may be imitating an imitator The Raphael style was so popular in the mid-19th century that every painter had to imitate him, even by imitation It is this culture, rather than Raphael's own works, that has angered pre Raphael artists

Ambitious people are not satisfied with imitation The second stage of appreciation growth is consciously targeting originality

I think the greatest masters have a spirit of selflessness They are all focused on getting the correct answer, so if some parts of the correct answer have already been discovered, there is no reason not to use it They have enough confidence to draw nourishment from others without worrying about losing their own ideas in the process

Good design is usually peculiar. Some of the most outstanding works have incredible qualities: Euler's formula, Bruegel's Snow Hunter, SR-71, Lisp They are not only beautiful, but also strangely beautiful

I don't know the reason Perhaps it's my own ignorance The can opener must also be incredible for dogs If I were smart enough, I would think that ei * pi=-1 is the most natural thing in the world Anyway, this formula is definitely true

Most of the qualities I mentioned in this article can be cultivated, but I don't think singularity can be cultivated The best thing you can do is when there is a sign, don't suppress it Einstein did not attempt to make relativity peculiar He tried to find the truth, which seemed peculiar

The only style worth having is the one you cannot deliberately pursue Especially for singularity There is no shortcut to take The northwest route that the mannerism, Romantics and two generations of American high school students have been looking for is non-existent The only way to reach it (singularity) is to endure good (design) and then come out from the other end

Good designs emerged in batches. The residents of 15th century Florence included Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Verrocchio, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo Milan was as big as Florence at the time, how many Milan artists can you name?

Something happened in Florence in the 15th century, and it is not heritable because it doesn't happen now You must assume that no matter what innate factors da Vinci and Michelangelo have, the Milanese should also have them Can Milan's Leonardo da Vinci?

The current population of the United States is about a thousand times that of Florence in the 15th century A thousand Leonardo da Vinci and a thousand Michelangelo live among us If DNA alone dominates everything, we will encounter artistic masterpieces every day We don't have it, the reason is that to create Leonardo da Vinci, not only does it require his innate abilities, but also Florence in 1450

There is nothing more powerful than a group of talented people exploring related issues In comparison, genes are insignificant: having Da Vinci's genes is not enough to compensate for living close to Milan and far from Florence Modern people have migrated more, but great works still disproportionately come from several hot spots: Bauhaus, Manhattan Project, New Yorkers, Lockheed's Skunk Works, and Xerox's Xerox Parc

At any time, there are only limited topics and limited groups that can do great work If you are too far away from these centers, it is almost impossible to have excellent work You can conform to or oppose this trend to some extent, but you cannot deviate from it Perhaps you can, but Milan's da Vinci did not succeed

Good design is usually bold. At every stage in history, people believe in something absurd and are so firm that you have to risk rejection or even violence by expressing different opinions

If our times were different, it would be great Based on my current observations, there is not yet

This problem not only torments every era, but also to some extent every field Many Renaissance works were long considered terrifying during that era: according to Vasari, Botticelli repented and gave up painting, while Fra Bartolommeo and Lorenzo di Credi actually burned some of their works Einstein's theory of relativity displeased many contemporary physicists and was not fully accepted for decades, in France until the 1950s

Today's experimental mistake is tomorrow's theory If you want to discover great new things, you should not turn a blind eye to areas that traditional wisdom and theory do not involve much, but pay special attention to them

As a special case, I believe that seeing ugliness is easier than imagining beauty Most people who create beautiful things achieve their goals by modifying what they find ugly Great works often arise when someone sees something and thinks, 'I can do better than that.' Giotto found the traditional formulaic depiction of the Virgin Mary satisfying people for centuries, but he found it clumsy and unnatural Copernicus was deeply troubled by a widely accepted theory among his contemporaries and felt that there must be a better solution

Not being able to tolerate ugliness is not enough Before developing a sense of smell that knows where to modify, you need to have a thorough understanding of the field You have to bury your head in hard work After you become an expert, you will hear your inner voice: What a hack! There will definitely be a better way Don't ignore these sounds, cultivate them The secret to great works is: a very accurate appreciation combined with the ability to satisfy it

 

本文标签： CreatorAppreciation