A conversation at the weekend threw up an interesting question: Which takes priority: the Art or Design of a piece of work? The example given to me, suggesting that Art should always take priority, was a movie and that the viewer is unlikely to be interested in how the thing was put together as long as the end result looks great. Thus was the argument for asserting that design is less of a priority than the art.

I am predominantly a techie but I always enjoy the opportunity to express my creative side. So any time I get the opportunity to be creative I do so be it applying colour attributes to a text interface to designing websites, brochures, adverts, banner stands, comic strips or writing. I have never really considered art and design to be separate so this is an interesting paradigm as, for me, design is priority and art flows from the design but is almost always rooted within design. For example, if a movie is made then it needs to be well thought-out, have a script, actors, direction and follow standard camera techniques, be budgeted correctly and managed throughout. The same or similar could be said for software design, graphic design, or any other process that involves elements of both design and art.

Dictionary.com describes art[1] as “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.”

So, the art is something that stands out from the ordinary. Keith Allen[3] in his “Summary of Aesthetic Principles” describes art as being something that produces an emotional reaction. So, simply put art is something out of the ordinary that produces an emotional reaction.

Dictionary.com describes design[2] as “to plan and fashion the form and structure …”

Again, simply put the design process is defining rules.

With this in mind art without design must be chaotic. Of course something amazing, even artful, could be produced from chaos; about this time someone will often quote the infinite monkeys with a typewriter[4] analogy but the odds of producing something of a reasonable quality, never mind outstanding quality, are surely astronomical as there are no parameters to govern it. Of course critics would now quote nature as being free-form art, for example a beautiful plant or the human eye - how can they have been ‘designed‘ but the philosophy of intelligent design is a huge discussion on its own.

I’m not suggesting art is forsaken in favour of design. After all, the originality of a piece of work can be largely attributed by its artistic form, but surely all art needs structure and that structure needs to be derived from a set of rules, however brief. In other words design describes the process, structure and confines of art.

What are your thoughts?

References

[1] Dictionary.com: Art
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/art

[2] Dictionary.Com: Design
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/design

[3] Keith Allen “Summary of Aesthetic Principles”
http://www.movierapture.com/summary.htm

[4] Answers.com Infinite Monkeys Theorem
http://www.answers.com/topic/infinite-monkey-theorem