In The Culture World－Western Design Of The 20th Century

Culture is the environment that generates and absorbs design. The word "culture" is used in its most democratic sense, that is , as a concept which embraces the ideas and values expressed by modern society as a whole , rather than one which only touches one level of human endeavor. The various definitions of design can mainly be divided into three aspects: material, sociological and spiritual perspectives.Based on the background of the Western design history of the 20th century, and from the new angle with unique view, this thesis just focuses on how the culture influences the design and design's role in the process of culture creation via real objects, custom, characteristics and the adjoint behavior and ideology mode. From the 19th to 20th century, design existed as the carrier of culture. It can be said that culture is developing itself by unconsciously designing. Design has a wide range, including three dimensional articles, graph communications and complicated system which contains information technology and city environment. Been widely considered as the concept and plan of man-made products, design became the most fundamental medium in improving the live quality.With in the framework of industrial capitalism which created it and continuous to dominate in contemporary Western society, design is characterized by a dual alliance with both mass production and mass consumption and that these two phenomena have determined nearly all its manifestations. Because the 20th century's design demonstrated the colorful phase and the deep culture connotations that brought by the change of consumption patterns, the taste, the commercial and the moral values. What's more, the continuous appearances of new materials, new technologies and the manufacturing methods and the social needs gave art and design an unlimited developing space. In the 20th century, the most important and influential factors to design is the marriage- lock relationship between itself with mass production and mass consumption. Industrial revolution established the mass production method and made design an independent part that detached from the producing process. Also, the mass production brought the commercial mode of mass consumption and made design become the important commercial competitive factor and marketing means. Design absolutely played the key role no matter in the view of the modern social values, or esthetic orientation or the city public space, hence embodied the development of consumption culture development of capitalism.In the new culture critic field, the culture phenomenon that based on the elite culture are no longer be treated as the main objects of the social study and the ideological study.On the contrary, the analyses and study put their attentions to the mass culture and its related common lives, and so as the advertisements, fashion, TV series, best sellers, pop songs, cartoons, news broadcasting, interior design and casual ways. All these have been repelled or pushed to the edges by the theory activities before. The above factors intervened each other, their overlapping and quick grafting symbolized that the fast developing world needs a new set of critic words, and design is competent. Design not only put people back to the picture world, it also restored people's imagination power, creativity and vitality and integrated snipping personality, identity, subjective and sociality. Design made a perfect combination of visual art and social human culture and at the same time, relaxed the pan-invasion from the "object system " and gave people the opportunities to enjoy art.