With a Douban score of 9.4, the second season of Netflix’s design documentary “Abstract” is here

Author: Xiaobai

Link: https://www.uisdc.com/abstract-season-2

The best way to get to know someone is to listen to him or her talk about his or her passion. "Abstract: The Art of Design" produced by Netflix is ​​such a documentary that allows design masters to share their love. This artistic documentary about the cultural and creative fields, which was launched in 2017, received rave reviews as soon as it was aired and became one of the most popular documentaries on Netflix. It has a score of 9.4 on Douban in China, and has become a must-see film in major art colleges and universities.

After three years, "Abstract" finally launched its second season last month. If the first season of "Abstract" talked about design and designers from eight fields that are more familiar to the public, such as graphic design, photography, interior design, and running shoe design, then the second season starts from the more niche art field. , leading us to see the ubiquity and true value of art design.

『1』Art Design / Olafur Eliasson Olafur Eliasson

"Art is the ability to investigate the world and is closely related to oneself."

The famous Danish artist, architect and design master Olafur Eliasson is one of the top ten international artists most favored by private art museums today. He is involved in many art fields such as installation, architecture, photography, and video, and is famous for creating immersive spaces and experiences.

The film begins with Olafur talking to the camera. He guides the audience to participate in his world through simple interactions, and uses easy-to-understand language to explain to you in front of the camera how to perceive color changes and how to understand color and senses. Relationship. Along with simple small interactions, you can elicit your own definition and understanding of art.

As an artist who truly interacts with the environment, Olafur particularly likes to combine natural elements such as light, water, and temperature with materials such as mirrors, metal, glass, and electronic products to explore new contexts of various natural phenomena and thoughts on the environment. . What is reality? What is nothingness? He always uses his works as a bridge to lead everyone to understand the taken-for-granted world they are exposed to from a new perspective and cognitive way. At the same time, in his opinion, his work also relies on the audience, and audience participation is an integral part of Olafur's works.

1993 / “1993’s Beauty”

2003 / The Weather Project

2011 / "Your Rain-bow Panoram A"

Harpa Concert Hall andConference Center

『2』Bioarchitect / Neri Oxman Neri Oxman

"She does what nature does, but maybe better than nature."

Neri Oxman, a professor from MIT Media Lab, is a truly beautiful and talented academic star. An architect, designer, biologist and inventor, Neri works in an area that is still very unfamiliar to most people - new materials and bio-architectural design.

The "Material Ecology" she pioneered uses synthetic biology and cutting-edge digital algorithms to create products and buildings derived from natural contexts. Design works are mostly inspired by natural phenomena, exploring the symbiotic partnership between bionic structures, new technologies and natural organisms. "Designing for nature, designing from nature and designing in harmony with nature" is her creed. The sense of future and technology are the distinctive features of his works.

Neri once said that when she watched Alexander McQueen's fashion show, she was as fascinated as doing scientific research under a microscope. For her, there is no absolute boundary between fashion and biology, just like architecture, design and culture have never been separate entities in her eyes.

What makes Neri unique is that she is the perfect embodiment of art, design, science and engineering.

2016 / Vespers (mask series)

2018 / Aguahoja

『3』Theatrical Costume Designer/Ruth Carter Ruth Carter

"People think my job is to sew, but that's not really what I do. What I do is actually tell stories."

The 2019 Academy Awards ceremony was held at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, Los Angeles. Ruth Carter won the Best Costume Design Award for the movie "Black Panther". She is also the first African-American woman to win an Academy Award for Costume Design.

2018 / "Black Panther" (directed by Spike Lee)

Before winning the Oscar, Ruth was not a well-known costume designer, although she has designed costumes for more than 40 movies and TV series. The famous black director Spike Lee is Ruth's long-term partner. As early as the last century, when she collaborated with the director on the film "Dark Tide", she was nominated for an Oscar and lost. In 1997, Ruth also collaborated with Spielberg on the costume design of "The Brave".

1989 / "Do What You Have to Do" (directed by Spike Lee)

At the beginning of the documentary, Ruth explains to us how different she is from what everyone imagines as a theatrical costume designer. She did not enter this industry because of her love for fashion, but because she liked playwrights and poets. Theater costume designers do not work as tailors, but use clothes to tell stories.

Costume design begins with studying and decomposing scripts. Before you start designing, you need to understand various background information such as each character's image, occupation, personality, life time and environment, and then start doing a lot of data research. From the length of the coat to the material and color selection of the fabric; from the printing and craftsmanship of the pattern to the accessories of the characters in different environments and scenes, every small detail must be well-founded and traceable.

Good costume design can not only help the actors get into the role and shape their character and integrate with them, but also enhance the fullness and authenticity of the plot of the play, making "them" be "them".

「4」Toy Designer / Cas Holman cas Holman

"Good toys make good people."

Cas Holman is an associate professor in the Industrial Design Department of RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) and a master in the field of toy designers. At the beginning of the film, Cas clearly described his understanding and design thinking of children's toys. She sees her job as creating tools for children to explore their own ideas and invent new things, rather than teaching them what the right answers are. Her toys have no instructions, and there is no so-called "right answer". Every child has his own thoughts and imagination, and there are unlimited possibilities for using the toys...

For example, Cas's representative work Rigamajig is a building toy composed of hundreds of small parts for kindergarten and primary school classes. There is no standard method of use, allowing children to use their creativity to assemble it. While training children's imagination and creative thinking, it also cultivates a spirit of collaboration.

Interestingly, Cas frankly said that although she is a toy designer, she does not like children, but she likes "people." She firmly believes that "good toys make good people," so designing for children is crucial to our future and our world. If toy design can become a tool to build children's confidence, become a help to enhance children's thinking and decision-making ability, and train them to become creative and compassionate good people. Then as hope, they may become the people who create a better future for us in the future.

「5」Digital Product Designer / Ian Spalter Ian Spalter

"Design is everywhere. It is not about what the product looks like at a certain moment, but about the user experience and the overall product strategy."

At that time, Instagram's icon changed from a skeuomorphic simulated Polaroid camera to a flat white icon with a rainbow background, which caused an uproar outside the industry. Although the APP's icon was questioned by many at the time, it is undeniable that Instagram has made qualitative improvements in this major revision, both in terms of interface design and the overall user experience of the product. The person who led Instagram into a new stage of development is Ian Spalter, the chief designer of Instagram.

Ian has worked at YouTube and digital product creative services agency R/GA, and was responsible for Nike's fuel wristband project and the design of some APPs. The interface design and logo revision of the application was his first project after joining Instagram. Ian's first reaction after receiving the task was to refuse it, but Instagram has indeed developed to a stage of seeking innovation and change, and is in urgent need of a fresh visual and interactive system that conforms to the trend of development and is lightweight and efficient.

The documentary details Ian's thinking process and design execution process when leading Instagram to make this major change. In order to let the public better understand the design intention and reduce controversy, Ian even led the team to shoot a short video and publish an article to explain the design concept.

In Ian's view, the significance of digital product design is not only visual and user experience design, but also related to the overall product strategy. The consideration of users’ real usage needs needs to be done at a higher level. Just like this major revision of Instagram, the change in visual design style (visual flattening) is not the main basis for the change. What really dominates the direction of change is the positioning of the product itself and future development plans.

"6" font designer / Jonathan Hoefler Jonathan Hoefler

"Typeface design is part of how people communicate with the world."

Everyone is familiar with graphic design, but few may pay special attention to how type designers work in the graphic design subdivision. The last episode of the second season of "Abstract" takes everyone into the magical font kingdom created by the famous font designer Jonathan Hoefler.

Jonathan Hoefler is a well-known prodigy in the field of type design. He became famous at a young age and quickly became one of the most influential designers of this era. As early as the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jonathan became famous for designing fonts for original magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, The New York Times, Esquire, and Rolling Stone.

From Apple computer fonts to the Gotham font used by Obama during the 2018 presidential election, from Netflix’s envelope lettering to Tiffany & Co.’s logo font, Jonathan’s works are almost ubiquitous in daily life in English-speaking countries.

In this documentary, Jonathan will not only analyze the basic principles of font design for us step by step, but also tell us about his usual way of thinking and researching design, his workflow when making fonts, and the story of his life and fonts. In addition, the film also touches on some aspects of graphic typography and the use of visual communication language, so whether you pay attention to the field of font design or not, this interesting and informative documentary will not disappoint you.

Jonathan Hoefler’s typography website https://discover.typography.com

After watching the film, you may feel that these creation stories are so exciting and interesting, and marvel at the complexity and difficulty of creating a work; you may also think that these fields that the public rarely have contact with are far away from you, and some design works are even difficult to Make people understand. Indeed, compared to the first season of "Abstract" which used more space to reveal to us the process of finding inspiration, conceiving logic and realizing a good work, the content of the second season seems to be more "abstract". Perhaps the creative team wants to tell us through the stories of these seemingly distant designers:

It turns out that there is still such a group of talented people, who are connecting the world in their own way in a corner of the world, and resonate with the development of mankind with their own love. "Art is the highest form of hope."

Station B viewing address: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av69037412?from=search&seid=5610394877052614549