Art / Design

Far from being a decisive moment in the lifetime of a person that exists in a separatist society where white is white and black is black and the grey areas in between will not manage to coexist with either one or the other… that one person will fall into one of the three… And wants to elude (and be part of) all (at the same time).
Art: self-expression. That’s where a generous amount of interpretation is required on the part of the audience. The who, what, where, when, why and how of the artist and the work in question suddenly become focal points for the generating forces of meaning to be applied to the work. All points of view become part of the discourse. All meanings become possible. All interpretations gather strength.
Design: communication. The set of points/adjectives/ideals/values to be generated and communicated must be received by the target audience in the same way. This generates an imminent discourse of success or failure of the work (that goes beyond the issue of aesthetics – the work must look good or be interesting to the eyes of the targeted audience). There is no interpretation required in an artistic sense. The must be no interpretation left with open guidelines – the only level of interpretation acceptable is the discovery of the meaning of the work, thus its communicative aspect.
The Grey Area: When art is designed (interesting interplay here) to say something is it art or design? Is it design designed to be read as art? Or maybe it is just bad design that requires interpretation because the message is simply not clear enough? Or maybe it is art that unwillingly steers the audience far too much towards a unique interpretation?
Why bother.

Well made art, like well made design, like well made (place definition here) are simply the triumph of the area they belong to. If the separatist nature of society doesn’t fail us here, that grey area (also known as, place definition here) should then be a mix of the two; a communicative brand of art / an artsy brand of design. Art that can function ans design /design that can be read as art. Probably the grey area is as big as the more easily defined art and design areas… and the fringes of the transitional points where art goes grey and grey goes design are fuzzy enough to provoke academic discourses to last quite a while.

In the end which is which? On the extremes, art is clearly art and design is certainly design. The grey area is the infinitely interesting and thought provoking grey area that defies definition and begs to differ from the establishment. It is an anti-art, anti-design creativity bubble with fuzzy edges… it is a pro-art, pro-design creativity bubble with fuzzy edges… it is everything and nothing… it is food for thought for both its neighbors. It is inspirational.

It is what I’d love to do.

Shallow, Quick and Easy?

If asked whether it’s ok to accept that the client is always right and just do what the client asks for without questioning any of the set of parameters necessary for an effective communication of the message, it’s sad to hear the answer is positive in many a case… ‘Now, I want this work done this way and this way with a font that looks like this and that and with reds and yellows and the logo on the top left.’ Now, taking for granted that in a commercial sense it’s best to do what the client wants without questioning their will at all (a. k. a. kissing ass) (the client feels his/her ideas are amazing, the ego bloats to impressive dimensions, …wow! damn, I’m good!), because this guarantees the client will be back with you. Yes, you are not promoting good design, you are just creating good feelings. Where could that be wrong? The client is happy and ego tripping, you the ‘designer’ are happy because you’re not really using your brain but just moving your hand according to the client’s guidelines… and you got a pocket full of easy cash… really, its a win-win situation.

In a social sense, maybe not.

It’s an ethical issue… not towards the client-designer relationship, it is more of a failure of the strictly unintentional society-designer relationship. That’s where communication fails miserably. That’s where the eyes of people (who come in visual contact with the work) may like or dislike the looks of the logo/booklet/ad/whatever… but the visual information the brain processes is lacking in conceptual depth. That’s where in the end society becomes the affected party because a culture for effective visual communication becomes non-existent and a capacity to process/understand the underlying messages and emotions, in a generalized sense, become null.

This does not include a possible thought that the person who suggests to the designer to do ‘this and that in such a way’ is naturally a genius for non-verbal/visual communication and does not require training or knowledge to communicate effectively a specific message, in a specific format, towards a specific audience, in an engaging, creative, and interesting way. By all means even the better designers concerned with the social/communicative aspect of design sometimes, even with a full semiotic investigation, do not reach a solution that manages to perfectly realize all the different parts of the issue… However, the point here is ethics and visual culture, not personal capacity, nor experience, or external factors that can hamper one’s creativity; if the designer takes steps towards understanding and investigating the visual communicative aspects of the issue, ladies and gents, we have a winner. One who questions, provokes thought, asks for an intelligent response, requires a detailed exploration of emotional and communicative aspects… If the right questions are asked during the defining moments of the meeting with the client, the outcome will be a true visual rendition of the many underlying bits and pieces of communication that otherwise would have been lost. Better questions, better answers. And who cares if the client doesn’t want to think, doesn’t like to be questioned, doesn’t look like he/she has the time to waste on a set of questions that he/she feels have already been answered albeit in a superficial manner… in the end, it is worth it! … and the client knows that (you wouldn’t be sitting there with him/her, otherwise, right?). Now we need to ask questions the right way so we can defeat the fear of digging deep into the soul of our clients… and the clients’ fear of digging deep into themselves and their businesses. Sure enough the clients’ perspective on the project gets expanded upon, the clients culturally assume a different stand towards the possible depth of design and communication and yes, the clients will end up being way more satisfied with the results of their meeting with you, the designer, because you have not only listened, taken in, and processed the clients’ wants and needs… you have questioned values, you have organized thoughts, you have shown an interest that goes far beyond only listening and kissing ass to make a buck or two… you have involved yourself into the project and shown your brain and expertise are at the service of  the client. Passion and love are a fundamental requirement of all human relationships… the relationship between a designer and his job is no different.