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Alessandro Mendini

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Marcel Wanders

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Design Of Mendini


Values Embodied in Mendini’s Designs / Aside from the internal logic of complex colors and shapes, Mendini’s designs contain many values hidden underneath. And those values range over a broad spectrum, from surface to deeper levels



1 Surface Values / At the surface level, Mendini’s designs look humorous, fun, and even fantastical. At the same time, they even make people feel comfortable. Not every design or piece of art can deliver those values. At the deepest level, Mendini’s designs teem with more radical values.



2 Values Pursued by Mendini / Fundamentally, there were a number of things that Mendini’s designs were meant to attack and overcome. As Mendini became involved in an experimental, radical design movement, he began to attack the so-called modernist design solely focused on utilitarianism and commercial viability. While his designs were usually comfortable to look at, Mendini was, in fact, aggressively attacking the existing utilitarian designs. That is why he was also known as a troublemaker.



3 Values Achieved by Mendini / The values that Mendini tried to achieve through his design works were expressed at the social level during the 1980s, thanks to his long commitment and the trends of the era. Mendini, however, was not content: he did not just break with the traditional design but invented a new type of design. That way, Mendini’s designs sparked a paradigm shift in world design and created new trends and traditions in design. In other words, Mendini’s personal design values became those of Italian society and went on to be reproduced at the global level. That is why Mendini deserves another look as a public figure, not just a remarkably gifted designer.



- Excerpt from Design of Mendini





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