Category Archives: Aesthetics

Aesthetics as subject

Cafetières, Disorder, Chaos and Anarchy

Posted on May 18, 2014 by Graham Shawcross

At breakfast this morning my wife spilt the coffee because she hadn’t aligned the strainer in the lid of a Bodum cafetière with its pouring sprout.   I suggest this is a stupid design, and “why aren’t the strainer holes all … Continue reading →

Posted in Aesthetics, Architecture, Design, Haptic Objects, Objects, Products | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Missing Pullover Found

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Graham Shawcross

My long lost 1970s pullover, slip-over, or perhaps more properly 70s tank-top, has turned up at the back of a cupboard. Last year we had turned the house upside down looking for it. The design is apparently based on the colour … Continue reading →

Posted in Aesthetics, Architecture, Design, Enumeration, Knitting | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Chocolate Fireguards

Posted on January 13, 2014 by Graham Shawcross

A very short post on Chocolate Fireguards, which as the name suggests are objects which subvert their own function. The first example is a real fireguard, though not one actually made of chocolate. It is an example of an object … Continue reading →

Posted in Aesthetics, Architecture, Brain Physiology, Design, Design Methods, Logic, Objects | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Subitising

Posted on January 9, 2014 by Graham Shawcross

The school report of Emily, our 4 year old grandchild, said that she could subitise up to the number 6, and I had no idea what this meant. Subitising is a technical term that comes from the Latin root subito … Continue reading →

Posted in Aesthetics, Architecture, Brain Physiology, Design, Design Methods, Enumeration, Geometry, Randomness | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Archetypes and Visual Pangrams

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Graham Shawcross

This follows an earlier post on Visual Pangrams here Pangrams To recap, ordinary pangrams use every letter of the alphabet at least once to form a more or less meaningful sentence, for instance: – Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz … Continue reading →

Posted in Aesthetics, Architecture, Classification, Enumeration, Visual Pangrams | Tagged | Leave a comment

Woodland and Silver

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Graham Shawcross

The co-inventor of the bar code N. J0seph Woodland died recently; his other co-inventor, Bernard Silver, having already died in 1963 aged just 38. They had been inspired by Silver overhearing the president of a food chain pleading with one … Continue reading →

Posted in Aesthetics, Architecture, Classification, Enumeration, Graphics Technology, Rhythm | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Enjoying Randomness

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Graham Shawcross

This came about after visiting Loch Maddy in North Uist and trying to think of ways to emulate the  strange way that the land and sea merge into each other there and realising that the technique had wider uses as well. … Continue reading →

Posted in Aesthetics, Architecture, Randomness | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Aesthetics of Aperiodic Tilings

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Graham Shawcross

Wang tilings seem to me to be visually more interesting than their plain or decorated aperiodic tiling generators. The various versions of the same Penrose P2 tiling below all look very uniform, with their randomness hardly registering, whilst the randomness … Continue reading →

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Find Your Own Space

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Graham Shawcross

A randomly distributed sets of points can be considered as the lowest state of architectural order; the placing of the simplest object, a point, with the least degree of structure, being randomly placed. Well distributed point sets are important in … Continue reading →

Posted in Aesthetics, Aperiodic Tiling, Architecture, Geometry, Tiling | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The Container for The Thing Contained

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Graham Shawcross

This post is the result of a recent first visit to Berlin; and in particular to the Altes, Neues and Jüdiches Museums there. These irreverently brought to mind James Thurber’s story Here Lies Miss Groby and her concept of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Aesthetics, Architecture | Tagged , | 5 Comments