Art Vs Design

I cannot tell you how honoured I am to post the first blog entry on my website with such a fantastic, highly debatable topic.And this is all thanks to a friend of mine, for bringing this issue up today in the morning. The conversation started when he told me how jargons of each of our professions are best understood only by us and for the lay man, they are always misunderstood.

The same applies to art and design. People often ask what is art? To me, it is a medium to express oneself. (You must be wondering what a clear cut answer this author gives, people have written books and papers on a topic as delicate as art, and she finished defining the damn thing in a phrase) People also often ask what is design? To me, its a well-thought of way of filling a gap/fulfilling a requirement.

Now rich and well-to-do designers and artists speak (at seminars, conferences etc) about these two topics at length. For minutes they go on and on without being able to make their listeners understand the basic differences and in fact confuse and complicate their thoughts along with their listeners and quietly exit thereafter.

Thats the reason why I am penning down some knowledge regarding design that I have gained for the layman to grasp, in clear and easy words.

Art is a personal expression of your thoughts, your feelings, your viewpoints etc through any medium of one's own choice. Some people are water colour artists while some excel at oil paints. Some do the trick with just HB pencils. But the thing about artists is , they do not create art for someone else's pleasure but their own. They have nothing to do with how world reacts to their art(for which reason sometimes art gets into a lot of controversy too). But thats what is d core definition of art, to draw , paint, sculpt or even write down whatever comes to an artists imagination. But design is too different from this sort of free expression.

In India, during Diwali, girls(or even guys) make beautiful rangolis outside their house, to which the relatives react in this way:-" Arey beta, yeh to aapne bahut acha design banaya hai" or "Hum itne gharon main diwali milke aa rahey hain, par aisa design to humne kahin nahi dekha". What do we learn as a child, when our relatives and elders only are not sure of what they are preaching us.We learn that art and design mean the same thing.Or else, we learn art or design, who cares!!!

But yes, design is never an act of self expression. Design is always created keeping a certain "something" in mind. I specifically used the term something, as this word can be replaced only by a very specific design terminology which also varies from one design domain to other.A design maybe created keeping a customer in mind. For example, a beautiful engagement ring can be created keeping one's girlfriend and her choices in mind. That's design for you.Similarly, a design can be created keeping a cause in mine. For example, a poster can be designed, the issue being of spreading AIDS awareness.

Hope that explains to you the basic difference between art and design. Now although these two things are pretty different by definition, but often times they overlap when it comes to application.A very celebrated, rich designer may stitch any 2 fabrics of his choice together, embroider any motif on it and pair it up with any colour of dupatta to sell a "designer salwar kameez". But in essence, this is an artwork which is up for sale but not a design, as it didn't solve any purpose or fill any gap.Imagine that I am an artist, so effectively I paint and express myself. But if I were to "create" some paintings for a 7-star hotel gallery keeping in mind the kind of customers that come there and their religious, social, political, business, cultural interests etc. I would essentially be 'designing artwork' for the hotel gallery.

So an artist sometimes turns into a designer and a designer many a times behaves like an artist as clear cut demarcation in their nature of work is not possible. If you do make it possible, then somewhere you are actually blocking innovative thinking and creativity.You are not letting the ideas flow. I mean , C'mon, your end consumer, for whom you are designing, also wants some artistic beauty in the budgeted jewellery that you are creating for him.Or the end consumer, who walks past a painting in the gallery, also sometimes wishes that a painting was made on the subject of gays and lesbians.

The minute you read these last examples, you would have found your thoughts contradicting themselves and rapidly running in opposite directions causing chaos, isnt it?Now go back to the beginning, where deliberately, I had kept my definitions small and easy as I had predicted that this chaos will take birth in your head after the debate on this debatable topic ends.