My friend Mike Essl made a website encapsulating the perpetual question between the disciplines of art and design. Totally stripped of context and debate, free from the defense of ego people can vote on one of the most annoying questions that follows designers from their first viz comm class to their death bed interview.
http://isgraphicdesignart.com/
There are so many levels to both “disciplines”—from a preteen grandson making a website for his grandmothers quilts, to Damien Hirst living to see himself make millions and millions of dollars—how do we place ourselves on this spectrum for the purposes of a conversation like this?
I imagine, for most people that are informed in an average way about the fact there is potentially a difference between design and art, it is a matter of “I know it when I see it.” I think this is a totally reasonable place for most people to be. After years and years of their son going to various school for design, photography, and fine art, my parents still don’t understand why or how I delineate those three things, and they get along just fine.
For me, I stopped worrying about the delineation because it served no real purpose except for to occasionally help describe what I do in a more palatable way. To my wife’s parents I am an “art director” because that is my most recent job title. To my brother I am a photographer because that is what he sees me doing.
I don’t know many people making a living as a graphic designer, art director, creative director, design researcher, design analyst, interaction designer or anything else calling themselves “artists.” At least in regards to their day job. They don’t have any need or interest in defending any particular position. Design being design is just fine, they don’t have to aspire to be artists.
All this terminology is very loaded for anyone even remotely creative. I remember my first art history course, and the teacher kept referring to “plastic” and an hour or so into class a girl stood up and screamed “WHY THE HELL DO YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT PLASTICS!?”
Since we all have different backgrounds and have no idea what someone else might think the word plastic means in the context of art history, it is very hard to have our comments accurately received.
In a conversation with Mike last night he put it simply, “…graphic design is graphic design. I don’t care for it to be anything else.”
