Identity and Aesthetics
Sustainable Athleisure Sports Bras Design: The Preferences for Aesthetic Attributes in Terms of Values and Lifestyles of Generation Y Females in Hong Kong
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ah Pun Chan
Athleisure is a new fashion trend in the world as it is comfortable and convenient for any kinds of sports activities such as jogging and doing gym exercises. It is also common normal workplace with the addition of fashion trend elements added onto it. Among the athletic products, sports bras are important as it provides support and protection for women’s breasts as well as to reduce breast pain from displacement during doing exercises. However, there is a lack of studies on the relationship between the aesthetic attributes preferences and psychological segmentation from generation Y females in Hong Kong when selecting sports bras. This study recognizes individuals’ preferences in terms of aesthetic attributes of sports bras by evaluating the individuals’ psychological characteristics. The scientific approach on using VALS system and the findings of this project confer to transfer the intangible preferences on aesthetic attributes from the different lifestyle characteristics of young females into tangible and measurable data for recognizing sports bras design elements. It significantly contributes to the sustainable development of sports bras in a new athleisure sector by reducing the inventory of sports bras and extending the product life cycle of well-deigned sports bras.
Amulets in Contemporary Design in Israel: Visual and Material Culture of Designed and Artistic Amulets
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Efrat Fridenzon Harison
Amulets have been studied in a variety of disciplines, from religious research to folklore, anthropology and psychology. However, there are very few studies about the side of the designers of the amulets. What motivates them? How do they define their work? Moreover, what is the context between contemporary design and amulets? In this study, I elaborate a unique field of material and visual culture in contemporary Israel - the design of artistic amulets in many fields of design: graphic, industrial, jewelry, fashion and textiles. Usually, amulets are meant for protection or mediation with a higher entity. Its uniqueness is that its shape and the way it is used do not indicate its intended function or its goal. This research presents contemporary objects that were created by Israeli Jewish designers, reflecting the characteristics of current times and expressing the spiritual and aesthetic needs of the designer as well as his views on social, political and cultural issues. The lecture is based on the fieldwork I have been doing for the past two years as a doctoral student in the Department of Jewish Art at Bar-Ilan University. My research is based on designers interviews, in addition to material and visual analysis of a wide variety of contemporary amulets.
The Exchange of Iranian Ideas on Alphabet Reformation with Their Design Solution for Script Evolution
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Farnaz Masoumzadeh Jouzdani
Throughout the history of Iran, the ideas and practices of reformation of alphabet/scripts in spite of insisting on their vernacular language raise the following two questions about the relationship between these changes and their preserved identity: Q1: How does the reformation of script during the Islamic periods help Iranians face challenges in preserving their Persian identity? To answer this question, Derrida's writing theory is remarkable, in particular, where he calls for cultural graphology, a graphology fertilized with sociology, ethnography, psychoanalysis etc., through which the writing structure of the nation's thoughts will appear from the analysis of their national writing. Consequently, the cultural graphological analysis of Iranian reformed scripts shows us how they have preserved their Persian identity through pictographic, idiographic, and logographic cultural forms in their national writings. Q2: In what ways can Iranian theories of alphabet reformation bring inspiration to contemporary Iranian in order to develop their modernity's identity? So far in Iran, either the practices or theories of script reformation have been mostly shaped under influences of both Iran's stance toward foreign relations and Iranian previous national writing. In fact, they have utilized their international parties' scripts to write their Persian language, while they have reformed it with the design of their previous scripts. It can, therefore, be concluded that the design of typefaces based on Latin alphabet (as the most common script among modern nations) and three cultural aspects of Iranian writings will provide a solid ground to contemporary Iranian modernists for developing their identity.
