Semiotics, Aesthetics and Functionality in Product Design with Emotional Minimalism Approach

Emotionalism is widely known to be a stylish key factor which concerns itself to establish a specific emotional relationship between the products and the users, trying to return colorful appearances together with other symbolic elements into industrial products. On the other hand, minimalism is moderately committed to promote minimalistic recommendations into colors and forms, utilizing simple geometrical forms and neutral colors such as black and white. Minimalism was of course introduced to art in early 60's and undertook an unprecedented decline during 80's. Minimalism, however, as the last movement of modernism, differs from decoration, symbolism and variety of color variations, whereas, emotionalism is among the first movements of postmodernism in which the use of decorative, symbolic and emotional elements in produces has been strongly persuaded. Although, some products were introduced in late 80's which simultaneously contained both minimal and emotional approaches, but it was not until early years of the 21st century where Karim Rashid officially declared his new style in design, named "emotional minimalism". Therefore, it can be said that, emotional minimalism owes its simplicity in form to minimalism and to conduct emotional correlation with the products; it utilizes minimal number of light, pastel colors rather than neutral ones. In forms though, in two ways minimalism and emotionalism, are furthered been married and mixed. First, by the retro design which usually benefits from nostalgic elements in design and second the non-acquaintance separation. In view of this, many designers, producers and buyers have since been struck by emotional designs. Among them, emotional minimalism is referred to as an important essence due to largely having unique and distinct attitudes. It is sometimes noticed that non-acquaintancy has been performed in both form and color. A clear example of this is Rashid's chess set which uses composing geometric and organic forms together with a deconstructive color codings. A composition of non-acquaintance with nostalgic elements might in some cases been seen in emotional minimalism. For instance, Marcel Wanders's Table Lamp (BLO), in which a couple of acoustic sensors are embedded in the mechanism which switch the light on and off by blowing to direct to the lamp. It can be concluded that in this design, a nostalgic element in form is sided up with a non-acquaintance element in functionality and technique. The current research has particularly high-lighted strong design characteristics in conjunction with semiotic, aesthetic and function as the major factors of emotional minimalism. Some specific functions, referred to as minor factors are also introduced. These minor factors are: conative, referential, poetic, emotive and phaticue. As a result, a good part of this study deals with introducing emotional design and the concepts of three major functions. Meanwhile, topics on analytical-descriptive products have been studied bearing in mind the case studies to make the theoretical concepts more applicable. Finally, relations between factors either minor or major in emotional minimalism products by presented models and those between one-way or two-way factors and their impact on each other which can be constructive, strengthening and even destructive are stated.