After looking at the different patterns I could potentially use, I came to the conclusion that the De Stijl movement that I previously mentioned in blog posts would be a good idea.
It would create an original pattern that would be more appealing to people and would make it stand out more. I am planning on looking at the history of this movement and then some examples of how this movement influenced products- specifically furniture.
I looked at Gerrit-Thomas Rietveld in a previous blog post which sparked the idea of including this specific pattern in my design. I want to also add a rough sketch at the end of this blog post to show how I can implement blue, white, purple and black in this pattern. In the previous blog post, I roughly sketched out something that was not very aesthetically pleasing, therefore, I want to create a more accurate pattern digitally.
History of De Stijl Movement:
De Stijl means 'The Style' in Dutch. De Stijl was founded in 1917 by Leiden and was made up of architects and artists. In this movement, artists simplified compositions to create outcomes using vertical and horizontal lines made up of the primary colours, white and black. They would ignore the natural form of objects to create a more abstract finish. They used perfect geometry, straight lines, square, rectangles that were combined with asymmetry and added colours for contrast.
This movement included Theo van Doesburg which published a journal with the name De Stijl, Antony Kok, Piet Mondrian, J.J.P Oud, Gerrit- Thomas Rietveld, Jan Wils, Gino Severini and Vilmos Huszar. The journal published included their ideas about abstraction.
De Stijl main goals was to promote simplicity and abstract in both art and architecture. Their goals was to reduce elements and recreate them in a very geometric way.
De Stijl was influenced by Cubic painting as they use many cubic shapes as the dominant element in their designs.
How is this pattern used in furniture/ how it influenced artists:
I analysed some pieces by Gerrit- Thomas Rietveld where he drew inspiration from the De Stijl movement. I will be looking at other designs inspired by this movement and how they implement the pattern in their designs.
As I mentioned that I am inspired by this pattern, I want to explore other furniture designs that used a similar pattern to see how I can incorporate it in my design and draw inspiration from it.
This chair design targeted children as it has very vibrant shades and it only uses the primary colours. However, this chair is pretty symmetrical which does not resemble the De Stijl movement. I like how the sides of the chair are painted black. That is a feature that I really like as it resembles the strong bold lines of the De Stijl movement.
I could potentially explore one shade on each surface just like this design, however, I do not feel like that is very interesting. The different rectangles on one surface make the design more intricate and interesting instead of adding plain solid colours. However, as I did not experiment with this concept yet, I will not discard it as it might come out really nice. I am not very intrigued by the idea but I am still going to try it.
In this chair, the design has the principles of the De Stijl movement, without the primary colours. I will not be using primary colours as I will add blue and purple shades. This is a good examples as it showcases how the design looks without the signature colours. It still resembles the De Stijl movement which is relieving as I want mine to resemble it too, even without the colours. In my opinion, the De Stijl movement left behind a legacy and it is still used in modern art. This shows how successful this movement was and how much impact it had on designers. I want to use that movement and draw inspiration from it for my own design.
In this chair, we notice geometric shapes that are rearranged in a very asymmetric way. I feel like the asymmetry would look really good in my designs and I would like to experiment with it in my development stage.
Even though I like this design, there are elements that I might have done differently. I like how the incorporated the basic idea of the De Stijl movement with the geometry and asymmetry.
Additionally, I like how the rectangles are large which makes it more interesting. I could look at the size of the rectangles that I will include and see how large or small I want them to be. This is a design that shows that large rectangles look really nice.
However, a feature I would like to see if the black bold outline. It is something that always stood out to me. The thick outline that defines perfectly each shape. I feel like it would look really nice and resemble the movement more. However, by not adding those lines, the design became more elegant and classy which is something I can also experiment with in my development idea and see which one I will use.
Moreover, the pattern on this cabinet is on the front. Even though I like how it looks, I feel like I could experiment more with the placement of the pattern. It could be on the sides or the top or the front. I would like to see which placement suits it the best.
Further to that, the frame of the cabinet is a white shade which creates a really nice contrast. In my experiment blog post, I mentioned that a dark frame would look better. However, I like how the white is looking and I can also experiment with different coloured frames.
My Pattern:
My attempt to create a version with my own colour scheme.
Previous experiment with this pattern for reference in my comments
Before commenting on this pattern, it is worth mentioning that these shades are not the final ones. In the next blog post, I will add swatches which will determine the final shades. This was another experiment to visualise the texture better and for testing purposes to see if it is suitable.
I used the first image as a guide to where to place my colours. In the previous post where I tried out this pattern, I noticed that there were many things to improve. First one was that it was busy and did not have enough white spaces. Therefore, I decided to use an existing guide to trace the white spaces. I feel like it looks much better as it allows spaces for the colour to breathe. Additionally, it creates a really nice contrast.
The second feature I disliked in the previous blogs experiment was that it had many shades of each colour with different undertones. I decided that I would limit the shade range and maintain cool, blue undertones so it looks more coherent. I feel like this worked perfectly and made the colours look really nice together.
This texture made me realise that I like cool tones which are more calm to the eye. The overall finish looks very high-end, calming and rich in colours. I prefer cool tone shades as they are more appealing.
The next feature I wanted to improve was to make the frame of the cupboard darker. I feel like the darker frame would look really good with these shades as it would create a really harmonic contrast. I will look at this in the development stage.
In the experimenting blog, I had my doubts with this texture as I did not like the execution of my thoughts. It was very rushed and rough. However, the digital sketch is much more neat and replicated the pattern well. I am definitely keen on looking at this pattern in my development.
I decided that I would not add monochromatic shades and that I am most keen on this texture and the gradient effect. I will look at these in the development blog posts to finalise my ideas. This was a very beneficial blog post as I am starting to form my ideas better and creating a more clear understanding of what I want to do. This week, I need to finalise all my designs in order to focus on materials and components and then start creating on software.
References:
De Stijl. (2016) [ONLINE] Available at: http://char.txa.cornell.edu/art/decart/destijl/decstijl.htm. [Accessed: 16/02/21].
Excellent, in-depth research, particularly interesting was your 'purple' version of the De Stijl image. Maybe a further research reference could be to look at contemporary stained glass - Tom Fruin's water tower in Brooklyn, New York could be a good place to start. https://www.tomfruin.com/
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