Monadnock Shows Respect for Design

Monadnock Shows Respect for Design

Monadnock’s “Respect” series of promotions began with the publication of “Respect Nature,” a visual comparison of nature’s beauty and awe. “Respect Design” continues the series with comparisons of high design and nature’s equivalents.

In many ways, “Respect Design” has much in common with its predecessor, “Respect Nature,” since the inspiration for design is so often rooted in the natural world. Nature influences design like no other force, and the comparisons in the work make the point with clarity.

The Link Between Nature and Design

The relationship of man and nature has not always been so tightly linked. There was a historical disconnect in Western thinking. “… The early Greek thinkers tended to either examine man in isolation or to examine nature without noting the presence of man …” wrote Lewis Mumford. “Respect Design” attempts to pay homage to the link that seems to physically and emotionally bind the two ever more strongly, especially as growing populations continue to impact the natural world.

The “Respect” series and this piece developed from conversations with Dave Lenox of Signaltree Marketing and Advertising. As Lenox remarked, “Nature is at the core of all our design work. We might borrow forms for design or simply be mindful of the environmental impacts associated with our designs, but at the end of the day, design and nature are always intertwined.”

Such comments led Monadnock to the notion that it’s all about forms of stewardship. As a paper maker and paper user working together, so much of its relationship is influenced by the environment more now than ever.

The “Respect” series made sense because, as Lenox put it, “There is a need to ‘respect’ the craft and discipline that enhance all visual communications. There is also a simultaneous need to respect the environment – and to understand that brands today earn or lose respect in the marketplace by how they address both.”

As more of us have access to an ever-increasing number of communication media, including computer-aided design, there needs to be an interest in design on a number of levels. We need to resist amateur solutions.

While we all can be “designers” in this computer age, it’s important to recognize that the professional designer can apply a “respect” and an informed perspective that the amateur designer rarely achieves. In addition, Monadnock felt it should work to integrate nature into everything it produces.

“Design, either overtly or subliminally, has the ability to influence our lives be it through graphic, industrial, landscape or other design perspectives,” says Lenox.

In 1990, Ian McHarg was awarded the National Medal of Art in part for his book Design with Nature. Then President Bush remarked, “I hope that in the 21st century, the largest accomplishment of art will be to restore the earth.”

This may be a lofty and somewhat incongruous notion, as it seems politics and legislation may be what’s required to save our world. But the notion may not be without merit, as all of us can remember images of nature that inspire and deepen our respect for it.

Design plays a major role in creating full impact. Perhaps the oddest element of this award was that McHarg was trained as a town planner and landscape architect. He was at the core, perhaps best defined as an “ecologist,” not an artist.

As Lewis Mumford wrote in the introduction to Design with Nature, “… McHarg’s emphasis is not on either design or nature, but upon the preposition with, which implies human cooperation and biological partnership.” This is what Lenox was getting at when the “Respect” series started.

So, making the piece itself became a combination of hard and soft, animal and mineral, big and small. The options were endless. The objective was to make a fun piece with bold images of both natural and manmade entities that would reveal how well the paper could accept ink and still convert in an intricate system of folds.

Tail Fin and Shark Fin

The goal of any cover is to be a killer image, so what better choice than the tail fin of a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Seville, Detroit “iron” at its best, the pinnacle of automotive design, the icon of America’s love affair with the automobile and, as the New York Times noted, the symbol of “post-war exuberance.”

Chuck Jordan designed this beauty for GM at a time when horsepower was big, gas was cheap and the highway system was expanding at record rates. Whether or not the Great White was top of mind in the design process, Jordan created an incredible driving machine, the top of the food chain, predator of the road.

Locomotive and Millipede

Henry Dreyfuss designed a variety of “streamlined” vehicles and appliances. Beginning his career as a Broadway set designer, Dreyfuss was hired by Bell Labs, founded his own industrial design firm and ultimately created this streamlined locomotive for the New York Central Line.

Reminiscent of the art deco era, Dreyfuss’ work was primarily concerned with how design related to people. He wrote Designs for People, and in the preface extolled, “ … If people are made safer, more comfortable, more efficient – or just plain happier – by the product, then the designer has succeeded."

The art deco look of the African millipede seems to be nothing more than coincidence, but the resemblance to Dreyfuss’ streamlined faring is remarkable.

Museum and Canyon

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, designed by Frank Gehry, is in some ways the most unnatural of all the images in this promotion piece.

A devout deconstructionist who grew up making structures in his father’s hardware store from metal and other hard objects, Gehry did not profess a great affinity for the natural world except for a love for fish. With that in mind, the luminous siding of the museum evokes the reflective iridescence of fish scales.

As Dave Lenox notes, “We steered away from fish to use instead the seemingly random shapes of the Antelope Canyon in Arizona to compare with the museum exterior. Both display movement and spirit that animate the two.”

Created by flash floods, the canyon is carved into a variety of shapes and textures fostered by the geology and the flow of flooding waters. They present themselves as cathedrals of design.

Feathers

The feathers are simply feathers, and there is no need for analysis. Perhaps in the beginning we were all birds and developed a strong impulse to fluff up.

The lesson one might draw from all this is that these design comparisons are endlessly subjective and perhaps, as a result, insignificant. Nevertheless, for every manmade object, there seems to be a companion in nature; and for some of us that is often more than coincidence.

In the end, respecting design is respecting nature.

For more information about Monadnock Astrolite PC 100 or to order Monadnock Paper Mills’ “Respect Design” promotion‚ click here or contact the Monadnock sample room at (877) 877-2098.