Wednesday, April 05, 2006

studio LDA : Is design really design

studio LDA : Is design really design ??

RICK POYNOR -- Art's Little Brother
Essay for Icon magazine about the relationship of art and design. As a cultural force, design is taken less seriously than art. Why is that, especially when the distinction between the two disciplines is becoming increasingly hard to locate? Isn’t it time we celebrated design as the meeting of art and everyday life?
Posted by Rick Poynor on May 17, 2005 06:37 AM


I read an outdated blog titled “Art’s little brother” recently from the blog page Designobserver. It is paste on as above. It intrigues me if the case is really so in the United State?

I haven't read the Icon magazine. So I don't know the actual content of the essay.
But in most developing countries, design is definitely not taken less seriously than art. In fact it is very much the other way round. For one obvious reason; design often has much stronger economic influence than art.
Well, I really think it is quite needless to distinct the two (design and art); as art can be design and design can be art, quite freely interchangeable.
What concern me more would be whether design is really design? Often, design (especially in the third world countries) is just a little more than duplication exercise. There is no innovation, exploration, consideration of context… Oop! Sorry, there are definitely consideration on the context of marketing and profit margin. Don’t you think?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dear Don,

I think it's difficult to differentiate design and art. Agreed. "Duplication" is no problem. When artistically done, it can become a good design or good art work as well. See Andy Warhol:) But are there really indented to be so? Or is it simply whacks it up and gets paid.

I think the nature of art is most accommodative. If it comes with sincerity and thought, most of the time, it’s not too bad an art piece.