[Sigia-l] Why "design" makes some of us cringe.

[Listera]

"David Heller" wrote:

> I would suggest that you can definitely be creative w/o being a good
> designer

I don't buy that for a second.
 
> Creativity is required for design,

Are you saying that design that's not creative is not possible? Look around.

>  but not all creativity is design.

Or do you really mean, not all creativity is BY design?
 
> ... but design is different from art.

How so?

> But no one would ever call this design.

As an art historian, I would.
 
> Purpose, goal & direction all inform our senses to tell the difference between
> art & design. 

Are you saying art doesn't have 'purpose, goal & direction'? I think you
might break a few artists' heart :-)

> But for as long as I'm alive the Sisteen Chapel's ceiling will be art and IBM
> logo will be design.

Exercise: In a large room, place the IBM logo next to a large painting by
Jackson Pollock, something like 'Lavender Mist'. (I chose Pollock since most
people would identify him as being 'un-designerly', if I may coin a term.)

If you don't know much about painting and/or Pollock, it's easy to miss the
'design' aspects in the Mist. You'd get a much better idea if you saw one of
those PBS behind-the-scenes documentaries on how artists get to
design/create their work, the process. You'd realize that the creativity
wasn't accidental. Indeed, Time critic Robert Hughes once said, "It is
impossible to make a forgery of Jackson Pollock's work." And he was surely
referring to something beyond mere mechanical duplication of his canvases.
 
> Most of these chairs no one would even want to sit in, so in essence we would
> call it "bad design" but beautiful art, no?

I've had two different Eames chairs for about eight years now. I've been
happily making functional use of them ever since, thank you. There are
better examples of 'non-functional' chairs, but we're already way off-topic
here ;-)
 
> I like this idea of bringing in the economic component.

Then may I suggest you study an 'artist' like Kostabi, an artist who is
nothing but a 'design factory'. :-)

Best,

Ziya