Chasing The Perfect: Thoughts On Modernist Design In Our Time - Hardcover

Ilyin, Natalia; Szenasy, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1933045213 ISBN 13: 9781933045214

Publisher: Metropolis Books, 2005

Synopsis

In Chasing the Perfect writer/designer Natalia Ilyin delivers her astute, incisive and humorous observations on design and the world it has molded. According to Ilyin, “Modern design is based on deeply idealist notions, and its inherent perfectionism has dovetailed beautifully with our commodity-based economy's need to keep people itching so that they will buy things and keep the society chugging along. I began Chasing the Perfect because I started to become aware of this collusion, this silent pressure that a language of design based in perfectionism had brought to bear on how I developed as a person.” Chasing the Perfect is especially relevant in our times as interest in graphic, industrial and architectural design moves more and more into mainstream culture. Each of the ten chapters features Ilyin's accessible and often hilarious writing, which is highlighted with a broad range of images--some quite unexpected--from the designed world around us. An excerpt: “The choices that designers and architects have made in the last hundred years silently mold us, silently direct us through the tunnels of Penn Station or up to the fifty-third floor of the Sears Tower. But they direct more than our movements. They direct us to notice one thing and not another, to value one thing over another, to identify with one thing rather than with another. Modernism, the guts of it, the strength of it, the egotistic beauty of it, carries with it effects we did not expect and fosters attitudes about ourselves and others that may have been dandy in a utopia, but do little good in our world. Why have we not changed this idea, moved on with our thinking? For even after the disbanding of the Bauhaus, the disintegration of the International Style, the exhausting of postmodernism, we're all still chasing the perfect.”

About this title

From the Publisher

From Communication Arts:

This book is not what you think. Yes, graphic designer Natalia Ilyin is erudite and keenly insightful. Yes, she waxes eloquently about the state of design in the twenty-first century (and she goes back a bit too). But she is also vulnerable, which is really why this autobiographical book is so worth reading. The book is her story, not a lecture. She trips and falls but realizes amazing things about the world of design in the process, and she confides with honesty and humor what it is she now knows. Written designer to designer, Ilyin understands what touches our hearts and our minds. Chasing the Perfect is about our failure to embrace our whole selves. It's about obsessing on unattainable purity, while denying the value--and reality--of the messiness of life. Ilyin seamlessly weaves often ironic and hilarious tales into powerful metaphors. Her highly creative identical twin Russian aunts have identical fingerprints but are polar opposite personalities; one is a modernist, the other is an eclectic, yet together they make a whole. We see them in ourselves. Ilyin, an ex-New Yorker who now lives on an island near Seattle, drives her beat-up ancient van (shaggy dog in tow) to Redmond, Washington to give a lecture on The Home to engineers at "a huge software company" (guess which one) and sees the irony of being chosen to talk on a subject she has yet to fully consider. While touring their soulless Home of the Future (where everything is automated), she channels Ernest Becker: "The great tragedy of our lives is that the major question of our existence is never put by us--it is put by personal and social impulsions for us..." An epiphany for Ilyin on what makes a home--design-wise. I will not say more because I would not want to spoil this for you. If you are a thinking designer, and an empathetic person, you must read this book. That's all there is to it.--DK Holland

From One Plus One Equals Three:

This book is a first for me: a humorous book about design. In fact let's say that again: a humorous book about design. A very rare commodity indeed. I enjoyed this book so much I read it in one sitting (it's also not a large book at 128 pages) and it's a thoroughly delightful read. Ilyin has a graceful and terribly witty way of writing. Chasing the Perfect is a personal reflection on Modernism's influence on the teaching of design and its practice....Chasing the Perfect is really a tragi-comedy. But as any comic knows,much comedy is rooted in personal tragedy - so stand by for the occasional hearty laugh, quite a few chuckles and a constant 'smile on the mind' whilst reading Ilyin's graceful ode... The book is also much more than merely a 'funny read' - it's quite a solid critique of Modernist principles and their influence on Western culture. Just try to stop smiling when you read Chasing the Perfect - I couldn't.(Especially the bit about the glowing Modernist box house).

From the Author

When I wrote this book I never realized how many people would write to me about it. These letters tell me that the creation of new design guideposts is not just an academic thought, but a real possibility. I like that.

Edition details

• Publisher: Metropolis Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1933045213
• ISBN 13: 9781933045214
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 192