Art is not design, and vice-versa. There are many intersecting points between both, but they have different purposes.
Art and design may often borrow elements one from each other, but ultimately, there are two separated things.
Design means usability, not ornamentation. However, ornamentation may be play a huge role on usability.
Art is an expression of the self. That is why art is so often developed by single individuals or, less often by a very small group, generally a duo. And that is why a lot of duos or groups break up very soon, and sometimes not without fights.
While the purpose of art is to draw the attention to itself, to make the viewer to forget the world for a while and concentrate on it, the purpose of design is just to sit there, without being noticed, while the viewer pays attention to something else.
Design is a support area.
Design is a support area, the designer’s job is to leverage someone else’s message and not to draw attention to his own work. Design is an area for team players, for group work. And design must take the user into account.
Maybe typography is one of the areas in which traditional principles of usability are more important. The longer the text you intend to write, the bigger the concern in helping the reader to get through all the text.
If you intend the reader to get through a phrase, probably big letters are about all you need to pass your message. If you want your reader to get through a paragraph, you probably need more.
If you plan to give the reader a full 500 pages book, you’d better help the reader to pause every once in a while, the page should have breathing space, that is, you have to use good indentation, good line and character spacings.
You want to preserve the peripheral vision from distracting with close elements, so a good amount of white space around your text might be very useful. Just like water, tasteless but not disturbing.
Now the point is, that not always, passing a message means “sit and read”. Some design pieces have little text or no text at all, like a CD cover, for instance.
Sometimes the message is not a calm one.
Sometimes tension is desired. Sometimes color leads to the right amount of exitement desired from the viewer.
But still in this case, it is the designer’s role to pass on another one’s message. In this case of the CD, the message is assumption about the music content. (Well, not always the music, we all know that some “artists” succeed not by artistic qualities, but just for a lifestyle they represent. But this discussion is outside the scope of this post.)
This is a great space for ornamentation and visual trickery. To draw the attention to the design elements, to pass the message on, not as an instrument of self expression of the designer.
Ultimately, even in a CD cover, great design is invisible. People that pick up the CD in a store should be tempted to listen to the music, and not just stare at the cover.
Even in the craziest and more iconoclastic design pieces like the ones of Neville Brody(who, by the way, gave major contributions to typography), design is support to a message. If you see books like Neville Brody’s G1
And even the very ornamental Art Nouveau posters of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec could successfully pass the message on through ornamentation.
Good design becomes art, and is timeless.
But talking talking about Neville Brody and Toulouse-Lautrec is very tricky, because this is another point where art and design touch each other. Good design becomes art, and is timeless. Just like Joshua Porter said on his “Five Principles to Design By“.
Guilherme
is a Web Designer focused on web standards and the web ahead of us.
11 Comments
You are right man. We may not forget about relations and differences between art and design.
A artist can be designer or a designer can be a artist but at a time they must take only one identity.
Very good article, it’s visible how the content of the blog is getting better and better.
I agree great design is invisible and that’s something difficult to explain but you suceeded.
Indeed, it’s quite often people refering to Art and Design as they were synonyms.
Some use the term “Art” to add more glamour to the design work.
You are very right about the main difference between Art and Design - it’s purposes. I would add another difference that is the Audience. Art and Design have different Audiences.
Like you said, Art is an expression of the self. Art is it’s own end and in that sense, not very utilitarian.
Art uses some elements from the concrete world but always to its own purposes.
Design, in the other hand, is very much utilitarian: it consider the society purposes first and then fits the work to that end. In that sense, it’s more “commercial”.
Fashion design, for instance is made based on the customer’s desire.
I’m refering to Art and Design in their most pure form. Of course there is not a rigid rule.
There is Design not very much utilitarian, like some Experimental Fashion Design. They are not made for wearing, but to express a Concept. It’s almost Art itself.
And of course there is ordinary Art, made just for selling, without any creative think or feeling. In this case, the Audience is the buyer and not the artist. Art is only based on the customer’s desire.
Anna, thanks for the long, inspired answer.
I think you are right in what you say. But your answer made me think because it’s true that art is not always an expression of the self.
Before the invention of photography artist were hired to depict important families and personalities and that wasn’t really self-expression.
But still, you are right in the fact that art was not utilitarian in the sense that was not support for something, it has an end on itself (despite any social “use” they might have found for it).
Design, on the other side, has always been a support area. Even in the time where the painters, and not the photographers, depicted personalities.
So, maybe I should rephrase to say “Art might be a form of self expression and has an end on itself while the use of design is transitory and that’s why should be invisible”.
Am I right?
Well, i totally agree with you in your arguments, but i think the problem doesnt rely in the artist or in the designer themselves. It is possible for each one of them co-exist simutaneously, however these words have the ability to glamourise (ouch, what a word) the object, so the speecher most of the time mention them in a context very shallow. its very common people using certain cliché words to show cultural knowledge, throwing their significances in the trash can. art is everywhere, so is design, but art could be taken as anyone’s expression of the self. design requires technics, parameters, and it is there to fullfil an specific function.
But sometimes they both can be invisible :)
I totally agree, Patricia. I think too that there is an over-glamour around the idea of being an artist.
I always find it funny when people say things like “hollywood artists” for just about anyone that puts his/her face on the big screen.
I find that a good amount of them are is what is called “Movie Industry” so I guess, they should be called “hollywood workers”… lol
Anyway, I’m not sure I got your point about the “invisible art”.
I mean by invisible when they are analised by someone that doesnt have parameters to analise it. As i said, design requires technics to reach a certain objective. It requires repertoty.
So does art :)
Totally true!
Well, although I can generally agree, someone needs to voice the other side as well. That might as well be me.
Art and design. Two distinct exclusive roles? No… I can’t agree with that.
Somewhere in the middle, a design becomes so artistic where it captures attention and receives artistic appraisal. Additionally, some work of art is so beautiful that it is used as a design template.
A good design is usually aesthetically pleasing and reflects some form of reality, thus achieving invisibility because we’ve become accustomed to it. However, sun sets and sun rises exist everyday and sometimes we hardly notice their beauty and artistry. Thus, it is of aesthetic design but works of art. One can say this with many elements in nature.
Naturally, we can usually distinguish the two different types of work but we can’t make the assumption that they’re exclusive of each other.
-Illy
Hi illusive, thanks for joining us.
I don’t think at all art and design are mutually exclusive. In fact, they really touch each other quite often, just as much as cooking may be regarded as art and Donald Knuth would even talk about The Art of Computer Programming.
Yet, I still stand on thinking that conceptually art and design are different things. Not meaning that an object can’t be art and design simultaneously.
I agree design and art are different things, but they are not totally opposite concepts. Depends on the circustances, the context and where it is exposed design can be art and vice-versa. And, as we discussed during our last face-to-face meeting,the theory can also be used when we think about literature. Form should be invisible and just help the content to be understood by the reader.
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