DESIGN REVIEW : ‘FUTURE STYLE’ SLICKLY PEERS WRONG WAY

“Future Style,” a one-day symposium presented Saturday by Art Direction + Design in Orange County at UC Irvine’s Nelson Auditorium, seemed more like an overview of recent trends in various areas of design than a preview of upcoming styles. Six speakers and performers from various disciplines gave presentations of their work, but the emphasis remained on what has been and what is, rather than what will be.

In his keynote address, author Ray Bradbury declared that if enough people followed their hearts, they could realize their optimistic vision of humanity’s future. Bradbury exhorted his enthusiastic listeners to “jump off the cliff and learn how to make wings on the way down.”

But few of the other speakers suggested ways to create those vital wings. Rod Kilpatrick from the Fallon McElligot agency in Minneapolis showed slides and tapes of his company’s recent print and television campaigns. Many of these visuals amused the viewers and may have been effective at selling products, but it was not made clear whether this represents the future of advertising.

A slide show and demonstration of “desk-top publishing” by Paul Pruneau from Apple used the MacIntosh computer to showcase the company’s product, but failed to place its capabilities in any sort of context. This slick presentation seemed a bit too much like a sales pitch for an educational program.

Bob Swanson from Omnibus Productions screened familiar show reels of computer animation from the Omnibus, Digital and Robert Abel studios. Their shiny chrome-and-neon images were striking but completely at odds with the organic, soft-edged look of contemporary graphics. No one suggested whether in the next few years artists and designers will return to the hard-edged, air-brushed effects that can be easily rendered with computers; or whether they’ll continue to develop the ragged, more expressionistic style

Or is it a mistake to view those trends as mutually exclusive? The unpretentious and often droll computer-generated images presented by Dr. James Blinn of Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in “The Mechanical Universe,” his video course in college physics, suggested ways to blend high technology and contemporary funk into a synthesis that is greater (and more interesting) than the sum of its parts.

“Future Style” provided an agreeable, low-key forum for the exchange of information. But the program failed to provide a coherent frame of reference for that information. Presenting random data to an audience is not the same as telling them something.