The philosophical content of industrial design

Bryzgov Nikolay Viktorovich PhD in Art History Professor, Department of Industrial Design, Russian State Art-Industrial University named after S.G. Stroganov 125080, Russia, Moscow, Volokolamsk highway, 9, p. 1, of. 540 bryzgofff@yandex.ru

Speaking about the philosophy of industrial design, it must be remembered that the principles of a reasonable, proportionate and aesthetic structure of the world were realized as such in the cradle of European philosophy, Ancient Greece, and the name of being "cosmos", inherited by us from the Greeks, means "ordered". A person strives for harmony in the surrounding space, to get rid of chaos, and "for philosophy, the aesthetic view is naturally related" ^{[1, p. 25]}. The designer is also busy ordering the world, and in this sense he is engaged in cosmological work, creation ^{[2, p. 359]}. However, since antiquity, beauty and proportionality have been correlated not only with the aesthetic side of reality, but also with the ethical and axiological. G. I. Petrova notes on this occasion: "The aesthetic and ontological beginnings of design activity express a human desire for the beautiful, which cannot be the prerogative of aesthetic mood alone, it is an event of all spheres of social relations and personal aspects of human life" ^{[1, p. 26]}. Thus, industrial design has a certain philosophical content associated with the attraction not only to the aesthetic side of reality, but also to its axiological and ethical alignment.

Design categories have a long history as categories of philosophy. For example, this concerns form: its philosophical categorization comes from Aristotle, who considered form (eidos) not a shell, but, on the contrary, the inner content of a thing – partly like Platonic ideas. Aristotle contrasts form and matter and writes that form is the entelechy of a thing, that is, an internal force potentially containing a goal and a final result: "The soul must be an essence in the sense of the form of a natural body that has life in the possibility. The essence [as a form] is entelechy..." ^{[3, p. 394]}. The form is what makes a certain thing itself, gives it its separateness and originality. The absence of form turns out to be the absence of the thing itself. The philosophy of design in modern science is considered as a tool that helps the designer to begin to understand the project ^[4], as an object of didactics ^[5]; its application is proposed ^{[6, 7]}.

The purpose of the upcoming research was to identify the philosophical foundations of the concept of "industrial design", which is usually perceived in an applied, visual sense, but has a deep philosophical essence.

An object of industrial design, a thing, performs cultural functions and has a corresponding philosophical meaning. According to the characteristic of M. S. Kukhta, "things give the space the properties of a text, become a formative unit of space within the boundaries of its semantic division" ^{[8, p. 101]}. A thing contains a meaning; in Latin, the word sensus means not only ‘meaning’, but also ‘sensation’, and, consequently, understanding the meaning of a thing is largely related to its perception, and perception is largely determined by its design. Every thing created by man presupposes cultural content and evaluation in terms of culture. The designer, on the one hand, uses cultural phenomena and concepts to create things, on the other hand, creates new cultural symbols.

The world of things is complex and diverse, it is reflected in art and worldview in different ways; the names of things have many synonymous names in the languages of the world. And as a result, it is the thing that becomes the object by which one can judge the development of design, belonging to it, its level.

A thing as a product of industrial design is a system project that develops in space and in time. The thing initially potentially exists in the project; it gets individual features here. Being embodied in the material, the idea of a thing takes shape; the conformity of this form to certain standards is reflected in the style of the thing. Finally, the finished thing acquires rich semantics, is actualized in various areas of human life, says a lot not only about its creators, but also about its user. And therefore, a thing as a product of industrial design is no longer a separate subject in its "narrowly personal reality" ^{[9, p. 45]}, but an object of a historical plan associated with many other objects (in being and in people's perception), included in numerous contexts concerning style, form, decor, tradition, etc.

In its existence, a thing unites cash and "service", an independent reality and significance for a person. And here it is important to note that a thing in design is born in a whole coordinate system: "For a designer, the object of transformation is not so much the projected object as the relationship of a person with it. Essentially, the material and spiritual connections of a person and an object in all their richness and diversity are modeled" ^{[10, pp. 7-8]}. In the system of relationships "person – object – environment", various connections are established concerning each specific object, each thing.

In history, in addition, the attitude of a person to his subject environment is changing. Thus, the cosmogonic myths of antiquity show that a thing (for example, a cosmic egg) is perceived as originally existing, as belonging to the "first" nature (pre-human, primordial), and not the "second", man-made.

An important parameter of a thing, equally important for philosophy and design, is beauty (aesthetics). Even the most ancient cultures are able to distinguish bright stones, metals and other aesthetic objects from the surrounding world. Ancient thinking paid special attention to the fact of the external perfection of the object, and it was it that compared the thing and the cosmos according to the principle of their orderliness and perfection: "Being isomorphic to the cosmos, it [the thing] is expressive and reasonable" ^{[9, p. 48]}. Aesthetics is associated with orderliness, harmony; beautiful is not thought of as chaotic, chaotic. This understanding of beauty as a whole has survived to the present day. Medieval culture aggravates the symbolism of a thing, begins to perceive its semantics as something separate and occupying a higher position in relation to its appearance, form and material. The development of the discourse of everyday life has changed the attitude to things, for example, in the last 10-15 years.

The origin of design is associated with the desire to individualize the world, to make it simpler and more convenient; "historically, design arises in response to the need to harmonize the objective world" ^{[9, p. 45]}. In the process of design creativity and design, form and content, ideal and real product are combined in a new way every time. The designer carries out a huge spiritual work from the ideal to the material – in search of a solution that is necessary at the moment, taking into account the initial data. No less significant and complex spiritual work is carried out by the consumer, who follows "in the process of consuming the object of spiritual production through the material to the ideal" ^{[11, p. 4587]}.

If we talk about the cultural identity of design, the question of its genesis remains open; rather, the problem of the genesis of design is related to the methodology of its research. According to one point of view, design is a product of European culture, which reflects its rationality and a system of values that ultimately dates back to antiquity (to the unification of ideas of beauty and utility). In the Russian tradition, design belongs to the sphere of art, and in the world tradition – rather to the sphere of design. At the same time, such philosophical categories as measure and beauty, thing and form, harmony and proportionality may conflict with such modern requirements as efficiency, cheapness ^{[5, p. 131]}.

According to another point of view, design is essentially one with the era and aesthetics of modernity, in which it originated, is a "product of modernity" ^{[9, p. 25]}. It is no coincidence that the theorization of design in the industrial era, when the activity of design activity, as an activity to create a commensurate and human-valued world, turns out to be associated with a period of crisis of faith in progress. At the moment, the development of industrial design is affected by the crisis of technocratism, which is losing its position as the dominant type of thinking. Design in every historical period becomes a response to the major crises of the era, important for the development of man and society.

Design today opposes primitive utilitarianism, it tends to aesthetics, environmentalization of the environment and "is born as a conscious response to industrial production, which at the turn of the century began to show its destructive consequences" ^{[1, p. 26]}. Design thinking is intrinsically related to the anthropological and narrative turn in philosophy that marked the twentieth century. Unlike the "first" nature, the "second" differs precisely in what is created by people and for people, and in this sense the design is distinguished by a serious humanistic content.

Modern design, as noted by the famous font designer G. Zapf, speaks on our behalf and expresses the philosophy of our era ^{[12, p. 42]}. The author proposes to comprehend industrial design as a derivative of our era, flesh from flesh and blood from the blood of our worldview. He notes that graphic design, like many other phenomena, clearly depends on the state of society and on changes in it, for example: "The rapid development of industry in the XIX century was reflected in geometric grotesques, <...> completely new font forms began to appear, aimed at attracting attention" ^{[12, p. 41]}.

It is important not to forget that the philosophy of design is a reflection of the philosophy of our time, and design has ideological content. In particular, G. Zapf notes: "The views of many designers are turned back, and it is difficult to determine from their works whether they were created in 1899 or in 1969" ^{[12, p. 84]}. A design that is not related to time, does not reflect current trends, ceases to be modern, and therefore, no less, ceases to be a design.

Modern industrial design in its philosophy is distinguished by a bright sign of anti-globalism. One of the first attempts to comprehend this direction is presented in the book by designer V. Papanek "Design for the Real World", written in the 1970s. The author sought to convince mankind of the need for a holistic perception of project tasks ^[13]. This trend, picked up in one way or another by all the design schools of the world, allows us to talk about the formed phenomenon – "the production of consumer goods outside the industrial direction in the new conditions of aspirations for harmonious social development" ^{[14, p. 36]}.

The question of the relationship between science and design is also ambiguous. There is no doubt that "science equips the designer with a modern method of cognition of the world" ^{[11, p. 4587]}, however, design proceeds from somewhat different ideological foundations than science, and its goals are somewhat different. Analytical cognition in science is aimed at achieving specific scientific goals, and in design – at revealing the internal structure of the form and, as a result, at combining aesthetics and functionality.

The modern design of industrial products, as the researchers note, is based on the following content and aesthetic trends:

• individualization of a thing, the desire to distinguish it from the mass of other objects, to emphasize its originality, as a rule, due to a variety of conditions; the introduction of the principle "form follows the emotion of the consumer";

• reducing the size of things, miniaturization, mobility, functionality; loss of a strong connection between the shape of a thing and its function;

• expanding the role of virtual design, cyber design;

• increasing the role of ergonomics, engineering and psychological aspects of design ^{[14, 15]}.

A modern design product is distinctive and intended for a specific consumer or for a narrow class of consumers who do not want to be like everyone else, who freely take advantage of the new world in all its technological variations and who want to demonstrate new skills to others. The design becomes deliberately disconnected from the function, which is declared secondary; the thing itself, and the function itself, the connection between them is almost accidental.

At the same time, the identification of the philosophical foundations of design leads to an understanding of its potential "anti-philosophical" orientation, which arises when design serves capital, is aimed not at improving the "second nature", but at increasing the number of sales. According to experts, "design departs from its philosophical basis and the solution of the task of creating the beautiful, true and good – from the task of producing goods – when used, for example, as a marketing tool for selling low-quality goods" ^{[1, p. 26]}. Thus, when the basis of design work becomes profit, we can talk about the defilosophization of design, its complete transition to the service of consumer society.

Thus, industrial design has a philosophical dimension in many directions. Thus, the aesthetic component of design is often considered primary, while philosophical categories such as measure and beauty, thing and form, harmony and proportionality appear. The epistemological problems of industrial design are also important, the products of which accumulate the cultural experience of mankind, reflect the formed system of values. This raises questions about the semiotics of design, cultural relativity and the universality of design thinking. The anthropological problems of design are connected with the models of the human creator and the human addressee of activity: both of them should be taken into account in the processes of industrial production.

The philosophy of industrial design is the basis of the specialist's worldview, which allows him to analyze the past and present, to think systematically, consistently, taking into account the anthropological needs of the creators and consumers of the product.