Patrick's viewpoints 嚶其鳴矣，求其友聲。

Art vs Design

Art is DIFFERENT from design, which most people just confused about. Many people just think that they like drawing, like looking at beautiful things, and so try to find a design school to study and think that someday he'll be working as a designer.

Art is often about self-expression, reflection of one's world views through the creation of art. When an artist creates an art piece, say a painting or a sculpture, he works on it, changes it, experiments with it, struggles with it, refines it, polishes it and then comes a moment when he is happy with it, he stops and says he has just finished the creation of an art piece, then he sits down and appreciates what he has done and also takes a break. Now this piece of art is a reflection of what and how he sees this world or what is in his mind, and even a reflection of him this person -- it is all about self-expression and self-satisfaction -- he has the total authority on that piece of work. He does not care whether his work is making money or appreciated by other people (well, it feels great of course if his work gets recognized), he enjoyed the process of creating. The process of creating art is so satisfying because he is free to do anything, free to experiment with any media and ways of representing his ideas in your mind -- there is no rule about it.

A designer, however, does things in a total different way. Design is often about solving problems. A designer sees the world as not good enough and tries to "design" for a better one. A furniture designer analyzes how people sit (knowledge of human anatomy), what postures will feel best for them and why is that (knowledge of culture and anthropology), and designs a chair for them. In the design process he has to research for the best type of materials which is on one hand best suits the purpose and on the other cheap enough for mass production (knowledge of general science and mathematics), then he has to figure out whether his design is actually practical to reproduce in the factory, he has to test whether his design, although looking good, is firm enough to hold a fat man or a naughty boy jumping on it, suffering good wear and tear.... (knowledge of physics....). Or take a fashion designer as another example. She has to design a sportswear for athletes. Similarly besides making it look great through those fashion drawings, she has to research for the suitable kind of cloth which is good looking and comfortable to wear (knowledge of textile), what cutting would make it most economical to produce in the factories, how the design would make the athlete perform best on the sportsground (how the cloth absorbs sweats well and release body heat efficiently, and let him do whatever activity he has to do? -- knowledge of biology and chemistry?)... There are endless questions and problems for a designer to consider so that what an athlete wears does matter in a competition. It takes all these problems solved to make a design work.

Designers create new user experiences. This is why designers always have to approach his brief in a very LOGICAL and CRITICAL way. He cannot do whatever he wants since he has to identify the problems, analyze the problems, understand the limitations, seek for the best solutions and then evaluate whether the selected solutions are doing their jobs. And also sometimes the most difficult of all, he has to explain in an easy-to-understand way and convince his client/boss that his design will work long BEFORE the design comes to be a reality. And also he has to be confident about meeting all those deadlines and budgets given by his client/boss (knowledge of management). So you see he is never doing something which only satisfies himself like an artist. And he has to integrate many kinds of knowledge in different areas to put his design a reality. Art is only one of his tools to achieve a purpose.

The trainings provided in art (and not design) schools usually concentrate on how one interprets the world (cultural studies), helping one to see the world in a different way that nobody has ever done before, and why in history those masters are representing their surrounding world in such ways (art history and criticism). Typically in an art school one would specialize on a specific art skill, like painting or sculpture, or installation art, and use the skills acquired to do your SUBJECTIVE interpretations in new and experimental ways. Well, I must admit this is still a very important training for a designer too, because this is one way how innovation and creativity are trained -- designer has to look into problems in new ways and look for innovative solutions. But for a designer, he can never use subjective reasons to convince his client/boss on what and why his design is good and an appropriate solution to the problems and needs. (Obviously the client will never be convinced and pay to a designer who just tell him that he likes to use red in the design because he thinks red is better than green.) Everything has to be explained in objective and scientific terms based on data and research, sounds justified. Besides, since the information and technological explosion, more often a designer has to solve his problems by integrating different kinds of knowledge. Say for a jewellery designer, he has to understand very much about aesthetics, but at the same time he has to know the materials (metal, gold, diamond and how lights could be reflected to its maximum (physics/science)...) inside out.

For those who are keen in art and considering the design profession, I hope the explanations above can help them have a good fundamental understanding of both art and design, and which is the one they really want to do. I have seen too many people came into the design profession with a wrong motivation from day one, but came too far to turn back.

P.S. This post is edited from an email I sent in 2003 to a teenager who was considering studying design. Today when I read it again, perhaps my view has evolved a little bit but I think it is still worthwhile to post it here.

posted by ablogaday @ 11/12/2007 06:26:00 pm