Seymour Was a Work of Art Always Getting Into Trouble Never Met a Lass He Didnt Love

Spend any amount of time working among professional designers and you learn that equating art with blueprint is a surefire fashion to stir the pot and hear bold statements similar:

• "Design is not art. Design has to function."
• "Art is meant to provoke thought and emotions, merely it doesn't solve issues."
• "Artists primarily work off instinct, whereas designers employ a methodical, data-driven process."

Unfortunately, the designer vs. artist word often deteriorates into ranting and raving. Lines are drawn, boxing flags are raised, and productive dialogue becomes impossible.

What's actually going on here? Why have art and pattern been pitted against each other, and why are designers so determined that design cannot exist art? These questions are the starting point for a thoughtful chat betwixt Toptal designers Micah Bowers and Miklos Philips.

Bowers is a make designer and illustrator who believes that art encompasses many creative disciplines, design being one, and therefore pattern is fine art.

Philips, a UX designer and lead editor for the Toptal Design Web log, takes the position that fine art and design may intersect, but they are distinctly unlike fields.

With our contestants in the band, information technology's fourth dimension for the debate to begin. Gentlemen, touch gloves and go to your corners.

Is Pattern Art?

Micah: Design is fine art. Art is design. No exceptions.

Permit'southward exist clear—I'm aware of how unpopular my position is, peculiarly amidst my design peers. I've been to talks, read books, spoken with colleagues, and taken classes determined to establish the irreconcilable differences between fine art and blueprint. Whenever I share my views, the backlash comes quick and fierce, but I remain unmoved past the counter-arguments (good luck, Miklos).

The insistence on a distinction betwixt art and design has been like a constant, low-grade fever that's bothered me for the terminal xv years—first through my industrial blueprint grooming, then during a fine arts graduate caste, and on into my career in branding and illustration.

My position is this: Not bad design is first and foremost art. What is this belief rooted in? A philosophical understanding of art.

Philosophers like Plato have debated the meaning of art and the definition of design for centuries.
("Plato" by lentina_x - licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The quest to ascertain art is steeped in centuries of debate. Greek philosopher Plato believed that art is essentially a reflection of a reflection of what is real. Just his views are widely contested, and since nosotros have to start somewhere, nosotros must aim for an agreement that acknowledges history and the diversity of global idea and civilization.

Paraphrasing the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy leads the states here:

Art exists and has existed in every known human civilisation and consists of objects, performances, and experiences that are intentionally endowed by their makers with a high degree of aesthetic interest.

Past virtue of this definition, design is undeniably fine art. Information technology tin can be institute in every human culture. Information technology is used to create objects, performances, and experiences. And, designers intentionally instill meaning amounts of artful interest into their piece of work.

Here, the inevitable weep is heard, "Wait! You've undone yourself by a single word. Aesthetic!"

Designers dear to brand sweeping assumptions in regard to aesthetics, so allow me to construct a safeguard.

Much like art, the concept of aesthetics is a complicated field of philosophical thought and cannot be reduced to the designer stereotype that it means "making things expect pretty."

In fact, aesthetics covers many questions that are essential to the "art vs. design" debate:

• "Is it possible to determine an artful judgment from a practical one?"
• "What is the basis past which nosotros judge betwixt utility and beauty?"
• And, "How are the foundational beliefs by which we make aesthetic judgments influenced by time, culture, and life experience?"

Hither'due south my point: In the world of contemporary design, art has been narrowly defined and unfairly diminished into a pathetic, watercolor caricature. Designers have flippantly inflated the significance of their own disciplines (which vary in substance to a comical degree) over centuries of artistic practise, philosophical inquiry, and cultural understanding. Blueprint is art. Art is design. No exceptions.

Miklos: Blueprint needs to fulfill a function. Non art.

Kickoff of all, we have to divide out what type of design we're talking well-nigh. I tin run across in the case of graphic design, illustration, and branding maybe design is somewhat "art," but if nosotros're talking virtually more functional blueprint—such equally digital product design or industrial design—we need to go a lot deeper, and it becomes articulate: Design is not "art."

Great design is part science, office process, and part a practical set of solutions with a dash of aesthetics thrown in. Going beyond the surface, a designer inevitably discovers that great blueprint is more about delivering solutions to problems.

Design is a process, non fine art.

As a UX designer, I always need to dig deeper, beyond the facade that ane might call a potential "pattern" and look at the bigger picture show holistically: the target audience, the utilize instance scenarios, the context, and the device the design is intended for: Boob tube to mobile, desktops to tablets, to ATMs, etc. And when it comes to production pattern, allow's not forget validation and usability testing. If pattern were just art, how could yous test it?

If design were purely about art, what about usability heuristics? Are such UX usability concepts equally feedback, consistency and standards, error prevention, user control, flexibility, and predictability out the window? Isn't pattern there to serve people? If you want to be an artist, be that, but don't telephone call yourself a designer. Be a painter or a sculptor.

"There is beauty when something works and it works intuitively," says Jonathan Ive.

The "working intuitively" role alone tin can't be achieved by "art"; information technology'southward driven past user research and testing. Practiced design is also data-driven. What is more, in the near future, AI will transform the style design is delivered. It volition be super-personalized and anticipatory. Will design as "art" be able to do that? I don't think so.

Yous can't say designing a ticket vending machine UI is "art." Surely, aesthetics and emotional blueprint come up into play—as other articles on the Toptal Design Blog take mentioned earlier—because aesthetics play a office in design to the extent that designs with better aesthetics make a product seem to "work better." But still, the office of the design and context of use need to exist taken into account.

For example, in Don Norman's seminal book "The Blueprint of Everyday Things," he talks almost design and the concept of affordances. (The concept of an affordance was coined by the perceptual psychologist James J. Gibson in his groundbreaking volume The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception.) Norman writes:

Affordances provide potent clues to the operations of things. Plates are for pushing. Knobs are for turning. Slots are for inserting things into. Handles are for lifting. Balls are for throwing or bouncing. When affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do but by looking: no picture, label, or instruction needed.

Then, affordances are "perceived backdrop" of a function in blueprint, and they demand to be signaled to the user with "signifiers," which provide clues to the user of the being of a possible interaction. I don't know how ane would become virtually marrying the concepts of affordances and signifiers with "fine art." They are essential interaction design concepts in the realm of HCI (man-computer interaction). They have nix to practice with art.

As a UX designer, I reject the notion. I mean, can you imagine a ticket vending machine designed in the cubist fashion by Picasso? Not saying it wouldn't be interesting, but it wouldn't exist very effective or functional.

What Is Good Design?

Micah: Art solves problems. "Proficient design" is only one path to a solution.

A ticket vending machine in Picasso's Cubism? Now that would be good blueprint! I can envision the easily of a capable creative person leveraging Cubism'due south stylistic dissonance into a clearly divers visual hierarchy that delights users with unambiguous points of interaction. Finally, nosotros could wave cheerio to the bland and confusing button shrines we've all grown accustomed to.

Interestingly, such an thought is not without precedent. In towns and cities around the world, public art installations take been used to better experiences previously disregarded or muddled by pattern. The Van Gogh Path, created by Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde, is a perfect example.

The technology of experimental installation art has a substantial touch on on the globe of design.

Inspired past Van Gogh'south Starry Night, the path runs through Nuenen, NL (a town where the artist lived in the 1880's) and is made upward of thousands of small painted rocks that capture energy from the sun during the 24-hour interval and light up at night.

If this were all the project encompassed, it would exist petty more than than a nice lighting consequence, but the scope of Roosegaarde's artistic vision is much wider. Van Gogh Path is a proof of concept within a larger project called SMART HIGHWAY, an ambitious try aimed at reinventing the Dutch mural past implementing a sustainable system of glowing, interactive roads.

The takeaway? Art and artists have the power to solve substantial problems.

Trouble solving requires knowledge, feel, skill, research, risk, and an agreement of human beliefs, simply unfortunately, many designers fail to acknowledge that artists use problem-solving methodology in their work—even though artists have been systematically pursuing artistic solutions for centuries, long before the distinction of "designer" was stylish.

Demand proof?

Once more, we await to a Dutch artist, the master of light and painter of the Girl with a Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer lived during the middle part of the 17th century, experienced modest success as a painter, and died under a mount of debt. About ii centuries later on his death, all the same, Vermeer'south work was rediscovered, and his standing as one of the slap-up painters of all fourth dimension was cemented in the annals of art history.

But a strange matter happened. The more than people studied Vermeer and his work, the more they realized that his paintings and process were truly unlike any other artist's. How and so?

• Vermeer had no formal creative training and apparently did not undergo an apprenticeship every bit a painter.
• His torso of work is quite small, consisting of less than 50 full paintings.
• He never had whatsoever pupils or apprentices of his own.
• Near all of Vermeer'due south paintings were staged in one of two rooms in his abode.
• There are no surviving preparatory drawings or sketches attributed to Vermeer.
• X-rays of Vermeer'southward paintings reveal no underdrawings or compositional corrections.
• His paintings contain lighting and perspective distortions that tin only exist seen through manmade lenses.
• And finally, Vermeer was a close friend of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch scientist known for his trailblazing piece of work in the fields of lens making and microscopy.

Some scholars contest that the human being eye cannot naturally perceive the lighting and perspective aberrations found in Vermeer'southward paintings.

What does all this mean? Vermeer likely used an avant-garde, and still unknown, form of camera obscura to create his masterpieces. This is a contentious theory, only in that location is ample evidence from multiple sources to support such a claim.

How is it relevant to our contend? Vermeer invented an apparatus and process that went undetected and unduplicated for over 350 years and immune him to create some of the earth's most iconic and technically exquisite paintings without any formal training. That is the pinnacle of problem solving.

Pattern is an fine art form, a method of homo expression that follows a arrangement of highly developed procedures in order to imbue objects, performances, and experiences with significance. Like all art forms, design has the potential to solve bug, merely there is no guarantee that it volition.

More than anything, I desire designers to realize that art is not an asinine subculture of design rejects preoccupied with finger painting their feelings. In fact, a low view of art is besides a low view of design, science, history, and culture that severely limits artistic potential and interdisciplinary progress.

At the end of the day, art solves issues. "Proficient blueprint" is simply one path to a solution.

Miklos: Good design is unbiased and delivers what people need.

Discover I didn't say "what people want" similar the Rolling Stones song that says: "You can't always become what you want…you get what you demand." People don't always know what they want, it's up to designers to figure out exactly what they need.

By the way, how are paintings solving bug? I fail to see that.

Good blueprint is subjective to a degree, but in my view "practiced design" is figured out along the way in an iterative design process with lots of validation/testing. It's "pattern thinking." Information technology's been around for decades. It'south something that just works, where things come together in the right way, at the right time, in the right moment.

Good design is definitely non about art or aesthetics lone. That is just the surface. Practiced design should be judged by several factors such equally the intended user base of operations, the environment, context of utilise, the medium, and the device it'due south to announced on. For instance, in the case of a ticket vending car, aesthetics may not matter equally much—people demand to become things done and things just need to work for them. Information technology needs to be super functional, fast, and efficient.

Expert design in my mind is a blueprint that is balanced in the right manner between aesthetics and interaction design. To keep using the example of a ticket vending car, in that scenario, the "look" is less important and should have the appropriate portion in terms of importance on the balancing scale, and usability and interaction design (functional design) should take the larger proportion.

We could also dissimilarity "practiced design" vs. "bad design." Bad design is pandemonium. It is disorder. It can be frustrating or annoying. Information technology slows people down and drains them emotionally. It may really be ugly, or simply unremarkable and therefore not worthy of anyone's attending. To your audience, bad design is an impediment instead of an empowerment.

Looks kind of cool, but is information technology good pattern?

Is Design Subjective or Objective?

Miklos: It's a mix of both in varying proportions.

Art and design are inextricably combined. I consider design equally a holistic endeavour which includes "fine art." Pattern is both subjective and objective but should be primarily objective. Proper design objectivity is accomplished past user research (defining the target user base of operations, getting to know the product'southward users, observing context of use), working through the essential steps of a user-centered pattern process (UCD) and user testing.

A pattern tin bound from a bright designer's mind, but its practical use nevertheless needs to be validated. If blueprint were only subjective, in that location would be no demand for usability testing (which would most probable upset the designer because he/she would notice that the design doesn't work). The design would come from 1 person which, to me, is a ridiculous, backward idea. Designers who are 100% subjective are arrogant.

However, a small pct of subjectivity does come up into play—aesthetics play a role, and this is mayhap where emotional design happens. This is the pace where the designer's sensibility, "art," and subjectivity is brought to the forefront. Great designers "dress up" or "put a facade" on the underlying functional design to create something that works on all emotional levels—visceral, behavioral, and reflective—to deliver a product with amazing UX.

Some designers believe good pattern must be objective. I don't believe that. There is a touch of genius in Starck'south or Jonathan Ive'due south designs. They bring a dash of subjectivity to their designs which has to do with taste. I of Steve Jobs'southward greatest insults was to accuse someone of having no taste.

Chair pattern past Belgian designer Maarten Van Severen

Micah: Fine art and all its disciplines (design included) combine objectivity and subjectivity.

I'm not sure how it happened, Miklos, but it looks like nosotros've found some sort of common footing, and I'thou pleasantly surprised.

Fine art and all its disciplines, including design, require a mix of objectivity and subjectivity. Of course, at that place will be designers who roll their eyes and declare, "Art is purely subjective. It can mean dissimilar things to different people." The obvious counterpoint? "Same with design!"

But let'south look closer.

When designers assert that fine art has to exist subjective, they're typically referring to the mode people estimate the effect of an creative person'southward efforts. This manner of thinking about fine art places a supreme emphasis on results. In other words, fine art equals objects, performances, and experiences. Fine art is a painting. Art is a dance. Art is a light evidence.

Viewed this way, art is subjective. I think American Gothic is creepy, but yous find it inspiring. I think an Eames Chair is classy, simply you experience it's kitschy. I call up the WhatsApp interface is confusing, merely you've never seen annihilation more than elegant. Fine art is a result, results are open to interpretation, and anybody'due south correct!

Is it fair to judge art solely by the result of an artist's efforts?

Luckily, the definition of art that I proposed at the commencement of this debate is more nuanced, and so permit'southward refresh our memories:

Fine art exists and has existed in every known human culture and consists of objects, performances, and experiences that are intentionally endowed past their makers with a loftier caste of aesthetic involvement.

Notice the words in bold. Artists "intentionally endow" their work with meaning to a high degree. In other words, they consciously enhance or purposefully enrich. There is intent married to action.

Understood more fully, art is not a result. Fine art is a process, and the process of fine art is overflowing with objectivity.

Don't agree? Consider the centuries of repeatable practices, standardized tools, chemical reactions, and scientific discoveries owed to art. To the extent that there tin can be realities independent of the listen (the definition of objectivity), art is objective because it is process dependent.

If a ceramic creative person fires a dish without offset letting it dry out, it will explode.

If a pianist places her fingers on the right keys, she will play the intended chord.

If a web designer selects Dingbats for body text, large portions of his client's site will be illegible.

The big takeaway, Miklos, is that I mostly hold with you. Art, and thereby design, is a mixed bag of objectivity and subjectivity sprinkled with enough ambiguity to proceed this Art vs. Design debate raging on for years to come up.

Conclusion

It is non at all clear that these words—'What is fine art?'—express anything like a unmarried question, to which competing answers are given, or whether philosophers proposing answers are fifty-fifty engaged in the aforementioned debate… The sheer diversity of proposed definitions should give us suspension. – Kendall Walton

At their near key level, both art and blueprint seek to communicate something, and whatever the differences, or whether classified every bit fine, commercial, or applied art—at their all-time, both forms arm-twist an emotional response.

Information technology has been argued that the difference between fine and practical art is context and has more to do with value judgments made near the work itself than any indisputable stardom between the 2 disciplines. Furthermore, comparing "art" and "design" is, though a lofty attempt, perhaps a quixotic ane, as neither tin be defined absolutely because they are ever changing—boundaries are constantly being pushed and will hopefully proceed to exist so into the time to come. This debate, after all, is timeless.

How practise we make up one's mind what is fine art and what is design, and why is the relationship between the ii and so fractured? Is information technology the difference betwixt what is functional (design) and what is non-functional (fine art) that creates the dissension? Is a Noguchi coffee table or a Rennie Mackintosh chair only a functional object, or is it art that happens to accept a part?

Glaswegian architect, artist, and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh was i of the first proponents of integrated art-architecture. He believed in the pure integration of course and function and sought throughout his career to bring forward the theory of "the room as a piece of work of art."

Rennie Mackintosh designed the furniture and other fixtures in his buildings, where every detail contributed to a greater whole.

Frank Lloyd Wright believed so strongly in the unity of course and office that he inverse the oft-misunderstood axiom, "form follows function" coined past his mentor Louis Sullivan to read, "course and function are 1." His plan for the Guggenheim "…was to make the edifice and the paintings a beautiful symphony such as never existed in the earth of Art earlier."

In conclusion, information technology is not fine art versus design, just the unity of the two that is at the core of any superior blueprint. In other words, practiced blueprint incorporates art.

• • •

Farther reading on the Toptal Design Weblog:

• eCommerce UX – An Overview of Best Practices (with Infographic)
• The Importance of Human-Centered Design in Product Design
• The Best UX Designer Portfolios – Inspiring Case Studies and Examples
• Heuristic Principles for Mobile Interfaces
• Anticipatory Blueprint: How to Create Magical User Experiences

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Source: https://www.toptal.com/designers/creative-direction/art-vs-design

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