SOLEA, Dumitru, GROSU, Rodica, TOCARIU, Liliana, BAICU, Ioan, SOLEA, Liviu & GOGONCEA, Vlad
47 Domneasca street, "Dunarea de Jos" University of Galati, GALATI 6200, ROMANIA, Tel.: +40 36 414112, Fax: +40 36 461353
Abstract: The modernization process of the consumer goods production basically aims at raising the living standard through the satisfaction of human beings, material and spiritual demands.
The industrial aesthetics is to be found in modern activity of design which generates a large variety of products. That is why one can associate the syntagm: "aesthetically and industrial design".
The tendencies are to implement perfect compliance with the aesthetics examination rules of the high serial products, from functional, technical, biotechnological, social, economical, commercial, aesthetically points of view.
Keywords: industrial aesthetics, modern shapes, aesthetical value, aesthetic expertise
The industrial aesthetics contributes to the design of a wide range of products as an expression of science, technique and art covering at the same time aspects of the human environment which are determined by the industrial production. The industrial aesthetics may be defined as a science of the beauty in the area of industrial production as it is in the first place a creation activity, combining equal parts of beauty and useful, theory and practice, generalization and creation according to specific methods and principles. No theory of the industrial aesthetics has been provided so far; this should take into account some inter-disciplinary aspects (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Sciences influencing the industrial aesthetics
The technical creation is now a higher form of human creativeness manifestation as it involves ample and rigorous interdisciplinary facets. The fundamental process of modernizing the production of material goods is subject to the main exigency of improving the civilization standard by satisfying the human being's material and spiritual needs.
The industrial aesthetics is to be found in the modern activity of designing large varieties of products that is why it could also be called "industrial aesthetic design" the tendency is to achieve a perfect accord between the aesthetics expertise criteria of the goods produced on serial scale both in terms of aesthetics and functional, technical, ergonomic, social, economic and commercial terms. The mass industrial production should not provide uniform stereotype goods; on the contrary, it creates various assortments of commodities, diverse types and models under new attractive shapes subject to further improvement according to a well -sustained product strategy. The industrial aesthetics promotes the creator's ecological awareness of avoiding physical and aesthetic contamination of the environment, to leave behind the pragmatism in the technical decision making with a view to exclusively gaining profits.
In the modern society there is a strong interference between industry and art expressed both in the process of determining, by the industrial civilization, new coordinates of the art evolution and in the more and more acute penetration of the artistic values into the domain of the serial scale technical products. Consequently the products manufactured on large scale, intended to fully meet the material and spiritual needs of the different social groups, and which may provide a high living standard, are marketed depending on their aesthetic characteristics.
Together with the general quality indices, the aesthetic indicators contribute to the complex process of assessment and evaluation of the product quality. Thus art stands for the indispensable stimulus in the contemporary production of goods and due to art the "production man" permanently improves his imagination, resourcefulness, the aesthetic taste while the "consumption man" improves his system of aesthetic exigencies with respect to every good manufactured under the influence of traditions, customs and fashion.
At their confluence the "commerce man" comes powerfully as he needs skills in the artistic conception in order to be able to rigorously select the goods in term of their aesthetic properties compared with the world standards and the best products provided on the international market.
It is thus obvious the increasing concern of the enterprises/firms which become aware of the activity they develop and wish to make the best of all the material and spiritual resources available through that we use to call design, aesthetics or aesthetics of goods. The last on is dependent on both industrial aesthetics and design as its role is to provide to the consumers new modern and attractive products, to promote higher quality and improvement of the aesthetic quality attached to the objects.
The design beyond aesthetics
Design can be basically defined as a global creative process. Creation is the designer's energy, much more pertinent and more efficient than a number of preset solutions. It challenges the existing reality to be accounted for by the permanent capacity of innovation, starting from researches, observation, reflections and emotions.
The activity, the leading wire specific to the designer makes use of a conception method in stages, from the most general assumptions to the concrete project. Three stages are mainly necessary:
Stage 1 - Large approach to the problems considered it is a global analysis of the enterprise, user and environment.
Stage 2 - Establishing a final objective with respect to the service provided to the user. This explains the designer's links to the marketing and value analysis. The method implies to think of all the possible short, medium and long-term solutions to provide the required service.
Materialization of the ideas by concrete formulations closer to the final product. The manufacturing of models, prototypes, and make it possible for a large degree of involvement on behalf of the decision makers placing them on consumer positions. This provides to design a pragmatic position.
The global character assigned to design is its great force as it becomes involved at various levels. Design is present both by its reason and its intuition; it regards things as a whole and is permanently linked to all the compartments of the enterprise (Figure 2). This feature was first a disadvantage. Today the networks used in enterprises for linking the human resources enable the optimization of its use.
The complex factors involved in the design, manufacture and marketing of a product lead to a correlation between a large number of scientific areas. Under the strong competition nowadays both the manufacturer and the designer should understand that they are not selling just a product but also a set of information which is necessary to be aesthetically approached. In this way the utilization value of the product is practically tested as initially provided by the research-design stage.
With enterprises a suitable organization framework is needed by providing a team of experts in industrial aesthetics as certified by higher education degrees. This team should be able to solve the problems related to the devising and promoting of new solutions aimed at refining and upgrading the users' demands. The bibliography in this field should be explored in manifold directions in order to get new and useful ideas.
The stages of investigation in industrial aesthetics and marketing include a number of analyses, studies and reports as follows:
Direct analysis of the products;
Analysis of the commodities while used by the users; analysis in the trade companies;
Survey of the users' opinion;
Consulting the specialists according to the specific type of product;
Audio-video or written collection of information.
The products are thus expertise rigorously according to some aesthetic indicators:
I1 - social-economic indicators: financial availability, degree of contamination, moral use;
I2 - indicators of shape, color, style: chromatic equilibrium, proportion laws, reliability, maintenance, endurance, costs;
I3 - aesthetic economic-technical indicators: technical parameter reliability, maintenance, endurance, costs;
I4 - ergonomic indicators: physical environment (light, temperature, aeration, humidity, noise, color), psychological environment, rest, time of working period (position during work), clothing
I5 - advertising indicators: packing, goods display, advertising, transport.
The aesthetic expertise of the industrial products is terminated by scoring each category of indicators as illustrated in Figure 3. Based on this score it can be determined the level of the competitiveness assigned to the product.
Figure 2. The sequence of steps to make a product
Figure 3. Influence of the aesthetics indicators on the product competitiveness
Thus within 100-75 points the competitiveness is very good, 85-75 means a good competitiveness while 75-50 indicates a satisfactory one and below 50 a poor competitiveness.
The industrial aesthetics is more and more regarded as a synthesis subject in the field of industrial production being to an equal extent theory, practice and material creation. The specialists in the field of products research-design field are interested in the users' aspirations as well as in their social psychological behavior during and after using the product. By approaching this field the authors wish to bring their contribution for the subject "industrial aesthetics" to be included into the higher technical education curriculum in order to encourage in the future engineers the education in the spirit of correlation between shape, function, technology, aesthetic, economics, profit They should be able to apply the expertise on an industrial product according to the specific indicators. By studying this subject the future specialists will know to take decision considering the aesthetic aspects too.
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