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Saturday, September 03, 2005

Design vs. Art?

Designers often struggle with the distinction between design and art. Perhaps one is instrumental and the other is not. Or design is for a client, and art is for oneself. I'm beginning to see the two more as points on a continuum. Early filmaker and theorist Dziga Vertov wrote that the possibility for film was "making the invisible visible, the unclear clear, the hidden manifest, the disguised overt, the acted non-acted; making falsehood into truth..." I think that this is the goal of both art and design, but that the emphasis is different for each. We could look at art and design along these lines:

art: making the invisible felt
design: making the invisible known

Of course, art and design strive towards each other in varying degrees. A landscape painting reveals a truth in a known as well as a felt manner. And a poster design reveals its topic in both an explicit and felt way. But I think it's fair to say that the emphasis in art is the felt, and the emphasis in design is the known.

2 Comments:

  • At 6:31 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    so interactive media is making the invisible both felt and known?
    and a question, what is the invisible, how to seize the invisible?

    oh, dear sir, i am a student in China, and very interested in interactive media.

    it is just now that i came across three exciting websites: start.com, google personalized home and news.com(http://news.com.com). i nearly found them in the same time, and i'm so excited to see that interaction is really coming to our side.

    Especially i want to metion that news.com provides each piece of news a assistant tool, including THE BIG PICTURE and WHAT'S HOT.
    When i looked at these, i smiled. THE BIG PICTURE is just like THEYRULE, and WHAT'S HOT is much like WORDNEWS. i have seen these two projects on your site before.

    Microsoft and Google are competing for next generation web, but the real master will be the users.

     
  • At 1:33 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    The comments about art and design are interesting. I always felt the difference may be one of emotion. But at this point in history I am not sure where the line is considering the power of the market. Though, the spiritual nature of early art (think 50,000 years ago) may indeed point to a difference in intent that still runs deep.

     

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