Graphic Design is not Art

Design is not art. This statement, I have grown to know and prove over time. About a year ago, I argued this statement with a professor, frustrated at the very idea. I didn't understand how such a creative career was not synonymous with art.

But he was right, design is not art, it is a plan. A costumer wants a logo, brochure, business card, etc. and as a graphic designer, you must leave yourself out.

Graphic design is definitely a creative career, but the design must focus on the needs of the client. There is very little room for personal style with some clients, and a graphic designer must be very adaptable.

You must also leave your ego behind and be willing to accept criticism willingly and sometimes even leave behind the conventions if the client wants something different.

Digital art and graphic design are two separate definitions with similar mediums. A design can become art, but this is not the primary function. It must first communicate an idea with a very careful, well thought-out plan.

Graphic design can be the sexy career it's made out to be, but the leave the idea behind that you can have a distinct style with every design and will never have to revise your work.

Defining Art

To follow up on my last post, I had an interesting discussion with my photography teacher last night about what art is.

He told the class that any photo, painting, drawing or other famous artwork can be reproduced with programs like photoshop fairly easily with tutorials.

As a photographer who has seen the progression from dark rooms to digital, I asked how he felt about his own statement. The photos he spent hours planning, developing and mounting can now be reproduced by an average person who takes an average photo and manipulates it mindlessly as the computer tutorial tells him to.

This can't really be considered art can it? It's robotic.

He answered that eventhough a person can reproduce, they can never have his eye, or think just like him. For that matter, no one can. A person will never look at a tuscan field and see just what VanGough saw or look at a building and see the same angle and lighting that the photographer standing right next to them sees.

We admire art because of the artist's unique eye and the way it makes us feel. True art evokes emotion and thought. It takes thought to create and thought to understand. Even the simplest art is nothing more than scribbles if the artist did not have a plan.

What defines art and artists?

As an art major, this is an impossible question to avoid.  What is art? 

After a semester of art history one would think the answer would be clearer.  In different periods, art can be very closely defined.  Artists were often discouraged from being unique and expected to copy the masters.  

If art were this way today, it would be much simpler to know what is worthy of being claimed "art" but our ever growing minds and progression to uniqueness makes this simply impossible.

But does that mean art in this day cannot be art unless it is entirely original? Is there even an original thought left? 

To those questions, I have no real answer.  I can hardly even say my own work can be considered art.  I can follow techniques, express emotions, and create beautiful things, but none of those necessarily make me an "artist".  

And for that matter what makes an artist? 

Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons rarely touch their own work.  They are the idea behind the art, but hire a team of people to create it.  And these two names are highly recognizable in the art world.  

The same goes for Renaissance masters.  They would often only put on the final touches of portraits then sign it as their own work.  And this isn't something that these artists hide, it's not some big plagiarism conspiracy, but rather accepted in the art community.  

I won't pretend to be the authority on the subject, but I have come to my own understanding of what art is.  I think that it is anything that evokes an emotion in a person.  That may be the artist and not meant for anyone else to understand or even see.  Or it may be the viewer.  

Art can be anywhere, film, music, print, fashion, nature, it's an infinite concept.  

After reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I've come to find that some things like art and quality, are a lifelong struggle to define, but a true definition will never exist nor should it.  Defining either would fall short of what the words stand for.