Recently I had to get my car MOT’ed and pay it’s road tax which meant having to check it in at a mechanics and basically wait to hear what they can find at fault with it. (Yeh, I know I’m cynical). While I waited I spent a quiet morning in a small park just sitting on a bench, thinking, meditating if you will. I have just completed my second year of University studying Industrial Design and my brain was having trouble couping with having nothing to think about so before I knew it I found myself trying to slot design as a practice into the grand scheme of things. Highly debatable I know but take my observation as opinion.
First let’s look at art. I recently read an interesting Internet chat conversation that inspired one of the debaters, H.X Sin, to write a book. The transcript is called The Dialog of Art and reads almost like a friendly debate between a teacher and his/her questioning student. Something that struck me was the argument that the definition of art is expression with impression only accounting for thought. This makes perfect sense but limits art to being a solely human contribution, something that nothing in the world around us can produce as we are the only species or living thing that is self aware. So art is an expression of an impression. Reading the transcript may give you a more detailed opinion on the matter, but what interested me was how this idea applies to design.
Design, for me, was always classed as separate from art for the simply reason that art is an individual activity that resonates as an opinion on something from the point of view of the artist. Design is meant for the people. You, me, everyone. Not that art isn’t for the people, it just doesn’t cater for what the people want or need, it caters for what the people have a freedom to see, hear etc. Yet, if art is an expression of an impression, does design not fall into that category as well? In design we identify problems, some more serious (depending on your views) or detailed than others; ‘global warming’ compared to ‘how can I bend this piece of plywood into a chair?’, and we use our impression of those problems to come up with solutions which we express through artifacts, instances, images and more. A good example would be ‘Design for the Third World’. It is all too obvious how different designers opinions on ideas and solutions differ depending on the impression that the problem has made on them. Often it is difficult for designers to work on ideas that they don’t like which is purely based on their idea or impression of the problem differing from others. At the end of the day the director of a project is the artist, ordering and instructing their work colleagues like paint and a brush over a canvas. Of course his colleagues may influence their impression, and that is most often the case, but there is a reason why so many of the design superstars of today work alone. I always hear a lot of talk about arts influence on design but I don’t think we should dismiss designs influence on art and the importance of the relationship between the two of them.
Above left: The Hinge by Jim Hannon-Tan
Above right: Woman in Armchair by Picasso
One Comment
as an artist it’s hard for me not to see design as little corporate fingers in the pie. recently i’ve seen a large surge or hand painted art that contain the same elements (and look extremely similar) as other works or art– as well as works of art the look like common as on billboards. so, i agree that design influence galleries and painters I would be hard pressed to call it art.
art and design contain many of the same elements but design is often incapable of replicating or wanting to replicating things that are flaw, unaesthetic and different. an artist is a quirky creature that live in his/her own world creating whatever they want when ever they want.
a designer on the other hand is usually forced to exist in the real world and live by it’s demands. it’s fairly entertaining to watch and artist (painter sculptor, whatever) try and do real design work– they fail in most cases.
ignoring the above painting to make money example I tend to believe that art and design don’t necessarily influence each other but run on parallel lines where the artist and the designer have in intrinsic understand of color, shape and subject trends.