Discussion On Humanism In Modern Design

It is not possible to do absolute reviews on the design in a "vacuum" environment if their time and space coordinates are ignored. The value-oriented design is always closely related to a number of factors such as social, economic, cultural, and so on at a certain time and a certain place. So the phenomenon we can see is that some important elements of design are always swinging left or right in rounds of debates.The purpose of this paper is trying to stand on the height of philosophy, to analyze the various styles, design ideas and concepts as well as corresponding social culture background in the course of development of more than 100 years of modern design history. Various value orientation such as function first or commercial supremacy etc., and a number of factors having great impact on the development of design such as war, technological progress, economic and cultural changes etc. are also deeply analyzed. Taking humanism theory as a yardstick, to measure all aspects of design, so try to prove the choice of design value , in many aspects , should see if it falls into the main stream of humanism, take it as a standard, thus to avoid getting lost because of the loss of absolute criticism standard. More important is to enable designers to jump out of the scope of design, from a higher perspective to see design and criticize design, making the design develop towards a direction more conducive to the harmony and progress of human society.At the beginning, the paper introduced the core content of humanism theory and its main development course. Then the 100 years of modern design history is divided into four Stages of pre-modern design period, modern design period, post-modernist design period and contemporary design period. It is discussed that whether and how the humanism theory plays an important guiding role on design in various periods. It concerns the true meaning of human life and destiny by rational approach, encouraging and promoting the design development process and guiding the design toward a harmonious development way of democracy, progressing and to the best interests of the overwhelming majority.Among them, the humanism at pre-modern design period embodies as some insightful people start to review and criticize the design serving for the powerful people, and first proposed the design should turn for the ordinary people that embodies the freedom and equality of humanism. Secondly, it promotes rational real design and against exaggeration and showing off that is the shining of the brilliant humanism. And lastly it focus on the value of the individual, such as the embodiment of human enriching life and advocacy of handcrafts, designers'innovative spirit and the spirit of self-performance. All these are evidences that human thoughts were free at the time.Of course, at the pre modern period, Although many humanism design ideas is of progressive ideology, because of insufficient understanding of the social contradictions and still in the way of exploring the resolution of the contradictions, thus more thought just stay in the theoretical level, and not implemented in the design practice. Although a variety of limitations, the exploration of pre-modern period design pioneers was still forward-looking and meaningful to the modern period that brings tremendous impact on people's lives. Its thinking on humanism design still seems a very important progress even seen in today.Humanism at modern design period, embodies as design democratization movement from theory to practice, which is a great progress compared to previous period that the design of democratic ideas of a number of pioneers only remain in theoretical exploration. For the first half of the 20th century, successive years of war makes people cannot live well, that is the social state. The modern people adopted a positive and optimistic attitude to improve people's lives. For example, they take a positive attitude towards the industrial era of technological change and make full use of the advantages of industrialization to design. Function and rational design are emphasized and at the age of material deprivation it creates the best possible quality of life conditions for ordinary people. With the development of modernist design in each country, the humanistic thinking in different countries is not all the same with different tendencies. For example, in the United States it experienced Great Depression, in the name of that people should enjoy free of shortage ,the government advocate business design and create business value, to some extent it save the lives of the people of the United States. In Scandinavian countries throughout the time it performs a modern design of unique way with rich connotations of humanism.In the 20th century, modern design has a profound human sense in the process of democratization. When it develops to a certain extent, it faces also a humanism crisis, lack of humanity such as individual, humane, poetic, historical or geographical area elements, also it increasingly diverts from the general public towards the orientation of the elite. If as Allen Bullock said: Humanism is not immutable theory, but a time-specific issues of common concern debate, then modernist design, due to lack of time–specific adjustment, seems to become stubborn and unreasonable. Against this background, Reflection of post-modernism to the modern is with significance of the humanities. For example, it has reflections on the modern period of complete rejection of tradition, extremely rational, and focus on elite awareness, and so on.However, it should be noted that this is not to say that the Formalistic approach of post modern design such as cheesy, absurd, arbitrary non-logic works are of humanism significance, but the reflection of post-modernist to Modernism in some aspects is of significance of humanism. It refers to a cultural critique spirit, which does not affect us to criticize post-modernist works of its loss of humanism sense.Modern Design in the creation of the 20th century cultural achievements is obvious to all, however, under the new historical conditions it faces many new problems. Some problems are relatively modest and can be dealt with by adjusting of design concepts, but there are some contradictions still quite sharp and inappropriate to solve it could obliterate all the brilliant achievements of the past. Because many aspects of constraints are involved such as economic benefits, employment issues, resources, technology, ethics and others, sometimes it is very hard to make choices. It is very necessary to use humanism theory to make guidance to avoid go astray. In fact, humanism can not give direct solution, but it can give us a belief, " since the date of birth of humanism tradition in the Renaissance period, there were many beliefs related to it, one of them is: people are not helpless, they have creative ability, once released, can grasp the situation." Thus humanism asks us to believe the power of humanity, power of thoughts and power of human creativity. Only when these powers are launched, the various contradictions occurred in contemporary design can be cleared up.After the past 100 years history of modern design was reviewed and analyzed, we proved that in the creation of human history, there is always an invisible force influencing the direction of its development, which are humanistic ideas.Humanism on the one hand, has unchangeable persuasion, on the other hand, has courage to change with time changing. It constantly amended itself and improve its theoretical system according to social development of new contradictions. It is precisely because these features, that humanism can always help us walking on the most conducive interests of our own road when human society faces new contradictions. "Humanism tradition has its realism reasons, not because it ensures the existence of our social values, although I think we must acknowledge this, but it has the ability to propose a new solution to the new problems haunting our society. "Perhaps the design process is complex and difficult to summarize with one idea and sometimes it will deviate from the humanities track. However, power of humanism is too powerful, and it is powerful because it relates to "he best interests of the overwhelming majority of mankind". Thus, every deviation, no matter how far, eventually returned to the track of humanism.