How might we explain differences between art and design?

Art has meaning. Art has collaboration. Art is left open to the audience to interpret. In design there is no room for interpretation. Rather there is a guided path, it’s a closed loop. Design is attempting to create closed chambers, with pockets of doors and windows, whereas art is creating open fields.

Design is an attempt to create somewhat of a static normal in this chaotic world. Design is about shaping of context, experience, facilitation. Design is the helper, the invisible hand, the guide. But art, art is the mirror, the reflection.

 Design is a deliberate act of shaping. Intentional in its nature, well thought out, constructed, design has a plan, goal, and objective. Art is open, allows anyone in, and introduces a dialogue, a speculation. Art communicates with the soul. Design shapes how one communicates through their actions/behaviors. But does doing make you accomplished?

Art is about being, relaxing into the space of uncertainty, uneasiness, insecurity enough times to finally recognize and enjoy it. Design is about certainty, creating a semblance of knowing amidst the unknown.

 Design is a manifestation of an interpretation based on limited knowledge. It’s layered and varied and moves from perception, to interpretation, to understanding. As designers we are excavators, digging deep to surface what already exists, only to shed light to it in a different way so it can finally be seen. We notice, we recognize, we silently understand. As artists we are dancers, embracing the free, moving in way that allows our true selves to emerge.

Are we as designers capturing art as it emerges and flows?

 Art comes from a place of inner knowing. The answer lies within, it’s a matter of creating a safe space to invite it out. A perilous line of making sure the within never becomes empty, because in that void awaits a bubbling surge of hot lava, that we have the danger of slipping into. We lose our sense of self as we pour ourselves into pieces of paper, music, food, clay. Inanimate objects of our production, our doing, only for them to be destroyed by critics who slowly chip away at us until we start to hide then disappear. So we must not be attached to our output but to the work that breathes us life as we bathe in luxurious waves of the ocean as they break into the sand and drift us wherever we need to be. 

Until we see the void we created, as part of our true self, in which art is able to flow, stay, float. We, the human vessel acting as a conduit, and our medium, the scribe as we surrender to the within and heed respect to the above.

 The answer for designer lies outside, one must search for it, but can never quite catch it, because it’s always moving. Design is about catching and releasing, only to catch again. Like catching a beautiful firefly only to set it free, giving us sparks in the moment, but never knowing how fleeting that moment may be.

So how can design continue to be fluid, relaxed, open, welcoming, forgiving, and inviting. And how can art capture look to moments and transform them into a facilitated dialogue. Art and design feed off of each other, like a perfect symbiotic relationship that keeps both alive.

How can our work have more meaning as designers?

 The answer may lie in lending from the arts. In recent days, we’ve shifted too much on the spectrum of the sciences working in agile environments that are lean, focused on velocity, and data driven design, that we forget the fluidity, elastic nature of design. When we combine the two, art can become a catalyst for design.

What happens when we reconsider Art as Design, Design as Art?

Art as expression

Art as design for an audience,

Design as an art form

Design as the art of facilitation

 Design as the rescinding of the ego and holding of space

Space as the ethereal mediums, which designers shape

Experience as the science of capturing and evoking emotional capital

Emotional capital as if potential energy waiting to be expended

Companies design an experience that may

Incite emotional investment leading to attachment with a product/service or to

Elicit emotion that will leave an imprint on human memory.