If you were thinking, “mmm peanut butter”, we have that in common. Anyway, you might also be wondering what these items that I have posted mean or why they are on this blog. Trust me I didn’t replicate a peanut butter jar or make a shiny plastic skulpture that looks like a flower; these are items we see every day around the house (or I guess for a lot of us now, the dorm room). First you see the black flower-looking thing which is actually a hair clip of mine. It works really well and looks really pretty. Although these hair clips are mass-produced and plastic, I would still consider them works of art. Someone came up with the idea in the first place, and people go to art school to obtain jobs that allow you to design beauty products that people use whether they be hair accessories, jewlery, shoes, or clothing. Altough I appreciate the beauty of this hair clip, I usually don’t look at it and think about the artist who thought to design it. But now that I am, I find it interesting.
The next couple pictures show the watercolor painting of flowers as a design for the otherwise white paper plate. This design is generic to us and would be a more neutral pattern to choose. However I’m sure for the artist who made this design, it was a big deal. I mean, imagine if you went to the store andsaw on all the paper plates, the design that YOU made. Although no one else knows it was your arwork, it’s still pretty cool to know it yourself.
And lastly, the peanut butter jar. As we all know, designers of products use many visual tactics to persuade the average grocery shopper to buy that product. The colors, pictures, font, size of the font, and language all do their part to rake us in and buy it. I’m not going to talk about the specifics of the design right now, but istead, simply about how much work probably went into that design. Designers of these types need to go through countless filters of groups of people who yay or nay the ideas and fine-tune it so it is the most efficient idea possible.
All products go through filters in order to be put out on the market and I think this is interesting. I also take interest in the fact that so much work goes into making these products as likeable as possible in order for them to sell, but we don’t notice that. We are almost the ultimate judge when it comes to products because according to what we buy, that is the most successful product and the behind-the-scenes work doesn’t matter. No need to think about this for every item in the store, but its interesting for at least a few!