Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Image from Favini Costume Design
http://www.favinicostumedesign.com/

T.S. Elliot wrote an adorable anthology of poems about cats called Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Andrew Lloyd Weber adapted the poems (among others) to create a musical. I got to see the musical performed last summer in Sacramento. Beautiful costumes, amazing sets, and emotionally moving music combine to make an artistic and visually exciting play.

In McCloud's book, Understanding Comics, McCloud describes the unique combination that comic books use to tell a story; words, pictures, time, and space. I think that this form of analysis should be applied to more areas of design. Musicals combine different elements, but I think it is the same kind of special combination of art and design. Musicals combine story, song, music, dance, costume, and set design. These different aspects can stand alone (as in comics), but as a whole, a new universe is created with the design of a musical.

In The Musical Cats, costume design is as important as the songs. The human form is taken into consideration and then applied with feline characteristics. The mobility and sleekness of cats is conveyed through slender form fitting costumes, and cat-like human qualities conveyed with symbolic cultural dress. For example; the costume of Grizabella the Glamour Cat (an old, worn, tired and lonely, once glamourous, stray cat) is conveyed by portraying a cat-like bag lady. The bag lady is depicted by drawing on the stereotype of an older woman who pushes a cart down dirty streets wearing filthy, over sized clothes that were once glamourous as she herself may have been. Her loss of youth, beauty and possibly sanity apparent in her choice of dress. Using these emotional stereotypical cues Paul Favini created timeless characters whose personalities were communicated with their dress alone. The feel of the musical is tied together by the costumes.

The choreography and movement of the actors and actresses expresses feline motion, the songs convey mood, the lyrics evoke feline concerns, and the set places the characters and scales them to size by using unusually large props, but the musical would be a miss without the design of the costumes by Paul Favini. (The image is Paul Favini's artwork for the costume design of Grizabella)

Watch this You Tube video of Grizabella

A Big Job

Photo taken and masked by me

When thinking of defining the word design, I think it is also appropriate to consider the job or jobs of the designers. There are the jobs that we readily pull up from our brain database: Graphic Designer, Clothing Designer, Web Designer, Interior Designer, and Architect (to name a few). What about those jobs that we don't readily think of? These can be jobs like teaching design (designing the curriculum for the classes), designing books (layouts, covers, illustrations), designing applications (iphone, iMac) and designing toys (barbies, Nintendo). What about those really amazing designs that we utilize everyday and we don't even recognize that they are designs?

Ever been on a nature trail? The kind that has little signs telling you about the nature that you are looking at? Who created the trails? Who designed them? Who invented the concept of the trails? What about toilet paper? Someone designed those little quilted flower patterns, and the roll that the paper is on, and the perforated sheets. Someone invented the toilet paper. But before the toilet paper there were toilets (or at least outhouses). Someone designed them, Someone invented them. Design and invention are constantly feeding one another, building upon their prior achievements, improving usability and allure.

I think design and invention go hand in hand. Maybe the ideas come from inventors and the application of the ideas comes from the designers. Maybe the designer is the inventor or vice-versa. Invention leads to design; design communicates invention. The person who created/invented Pepsi may have designed the flavor and color of the product, but a designer created the bottle that carries it, and the logo that sells it. The job of a designer is a big job. Whether that is to make more people aware of a great invention by designing an advertisement, or to design a new desk that is more ergonomically correct, Designers are responsible for sharing, communicating, and shaping the inventions and products that advance our society.