Embracing Design "Trends"
Do you have something that fundamentally changed your way of working forever? Maybe it’s a new UI / UX app like inVision, which streamlines the process of sharing wireframes and prototypes, lending itself for collaboration in quicker work cycles. Or perhaps you discovered the Apple Pencil as your great solution to create digital illustrations with greater ease than ever before. Have you ever wondered about the path that led these tools to you? The other day, as I was meandering my way around the Brooklyn Museum, I had the delight of viewing a series of “blue” paintings from Japanese artists as part of the Infinite Blue Exhibition. It instantly drew my interest as I stood in awe of the utter and effortless beauty captured with the limited palette on the small black framed paintings hung in rows symmetrically down the stark white wall. As it turns out there is much more than aesthetics that magnetized me to these paintings. I had learned about the background on why and how these paintings came to be.
Behind The Blue
If we think about the ink we have in printers, we often notice how over time the colors start to fade away. Blue ink is the first color to fade due to the natural graininess in the pigment of the ink. This makes blue in particular a color to savor as it is known to not be particularly everlasting in ink. In Japan, around the early 1820’s, there had not been blue paint pigment, artists were making prints and painting with a lot of pinks, browns, etc. so most of the subject matter contained imagery of beautiful women / portraits. Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe (Germany) they had already developed Prussian Blue (hence the name) about 100 years earlier, but it had not yet made its way to Japan. Once it finally did, the color spread like wildfire — people could not wait to get their hands on it. They immediately began to create blue monochromatic paintings, the first of which was inspired by the well known Chinese vases with blue and white landscape / floral / story illustrations. This blue color was the liberating vessel artists utilized to create landscape paintings. For about a five year period there was a notable craze for creating predominantly (almost obsessively) blue landscape paintings.
Brooklyn Museum – View of Shogetsu Pond by Keisai Eisen c. 1829. What is believed to be the first created print using Prussian Blue.
Brooklyn Museum - A View of Mount Fuji across Lake Suwa in Shinano Province (Shinsu Suwako) by Katsushika Hokusai, between c. 1829 and c. 1833
If not for this period, Hokusai’s world renowned The Great Wave could not have been made possible.
Metropolitan Museum of Art – The Great Wave by Katsushika Hokusai, between c. 1830 and c. 1832
What Defines A Trend
Trends in design have the potentiality of becoming permanent pillars or works of inspiration. We often move on from trends but sometimes do not take the time to reflect on the significance of how the establishment of evolving mediums can change the way we look back on history.
Although we most likely are not going to be introduced to a new primary color any time soon, we are left with the wonder and allure of new tools, technologies and methods of experiencing design in ways we could not have imagined before. The next time you have the ability to create something that elicits an inspiring precedent for future work, consider what made it's way into your hands – Who was involved in getting the technology to you? How much work was involved in perfecting that tool to meet your exact needs? The thought alone can sprout a new found appreciation for the evolution of a designer’s toolkit.
Answering The Questions
Are we creating in a trend period? Are we part of a movement without realizing it? Sometimes these answers only become consciously recognizable when you reflect back over time. Regardless of if we are in a blue trend of our own or not, we can embrace it and work to create new waves with it.