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Design

Design

Date: Oct 03 2003

Intro

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Art and design are both very important parts of human existence, but they are very different. The differences between art and design lie not so much in how they look as in what they do: They have different purposes, they are made differently, they are judged by different criteria, and they have different audiences.
Read on to learn more.

Dialog

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How they are Made
The methods of creating art and design are very different. In creating art, the artist stands before a blank canvas, or a lump of clay, and ponders all the possibilities. The options are limitless. S/he can do anything s/he wants.
On the other hand, the designer typically begins with more than a blank canvas or lump of clay. Many of the components may already exist, such as the text, photographs, production formats, and even the basic colors. The designer consults the client on the use of the product, the audience, the size, and other factors. The designer’s role is to envision how these various aspects should come together in a single thing and to bring aesthetic sensibility, taste, and technical skills to the production of that thing. In short, the designer arranges the ingredients.
Judgment
Art strives to achieve beauty, which is truth, which is a noble thing more enduring than life itself. Art is judged in terms of beauty and truth, of insight and revelation, of almost prophetic clairvoyance. Practical success is not the reason for art.
Design is judged another way: “Beauty is as beauty does.” If it doesn’t get the job done, the design is considered not good, or worse, not successful. A design must fulfill its primary job of packaging or illustration or instruction, and no amount of aesthetic glamour will substitute for its failure to do so.
The Audience
The audiences for art and design expect different things. The audience for art wants to look at the artwork or listen to the composition – perhaps to contemplate and reflect, perhaps to be transported by the power of the aesthetic experience or the scene portrayed – whereas a design’s audience wants to use the information to find their subway station or select a product.

 

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Discussion

Design is utilitarian in a way that art is not. Design is the how of a thing: how to order the parts, how to serve the client’s interests, how to convey the information. Art, on the other hand, is its own end. It isn’t utilitarian. It isn’t useful in an ordinary way. It doesn’t concern itself with description the way illustration does, nor with the desires of the buyer as does fashion, nor the tastes of the public as does style.
The difference between art and design is in the way we look at them. Design graces our lives with the aesthetic presentation of useful and beneficial things, and art graces us with representations of things to ponder and perceive. Art and design are closely related but nonetheless separate. It is a good thing to keep them straight.
Take it easy,
Miguel
[Portions of this lesson are excerpted from “Art and Design: What’s the Big Difference?” by Michael Brady, 1998]

 

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