4 ms·

Skill and art are not necessarily linked. It's possible to be a craftsman without being an artist, and vice versa. Think of a fabricator as an OEM. iPhones are

Skill and art are not necessarily linked. It's possible to be a craftsman without being an artist, and vice versa. Think of a fabricator as an OEM. iPhones are manufactured by Foxconn, and I'm sure their technicians contribute greatly to the manufacturing and design, but it's still the Apple logo that gets stuck on the back.

Hendrikto 8y ago
I wouldn‘t call an iPhone a piece of art though.
- atticmanatee 8y ago
  Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
- readhn 8y ago
  it is though. steve jobs treated it and designed it as functional art. unlike most other manufacturers. he did borrow/utilize many ideas from german artists and industrial designers (bauhaus/german modernism/braun design etc.). so like it or not i would say that iphone is a piece of art that others loved and copied. (which is good and completely natural).
- mattkevan 8y ago
  The Design Museum in London has pretty much everything Jony Ive ever designed in their permanent collection. They certainly are art in this context.* And I'd argue that Apple are one of the few tech companies that genuinely view their products as art objects, as well as being boxes of mass-produced consumer technology. * There's a wider question about whether the mere act of displaying something in a gallery makes it art, but its one that many fine art postgrads haven't been able to get to the bottom of yet :)
  - flanban 8y ago
    I would argue that the fact it's in a design museum rather than an art museum makes it design in that context. Speaking very broadly: Designers manifest other people's ideas for money. Art is more when you bring your own ideas into the world because you want to.
oytis 8y ago
That's how industry works. I don't know the details of Iphone business model, but they could in theory let all the components be manufactured by Tier-1s, let all the software be written by outsourcers, let the design and integration be done by someone else and only leave branding and marketing to themselves. But I would kind of expect of an artist to be a little bit more than self-brand manager.

Hendrikto 8y ago

I wouldn‘t call an iPhone a piece of art though.

atticmanatee 8y ago
Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
readhn 8y ago
it is though. steve jobs treated it and designed it as functional art. unlike most other manufacturers. he did borrow/utilize many ideas from german artists and industrial designers (bauhaus/german modernism/braun design etc.). so like it or not i would say that iphone is a piece of art that others loved and copied. (which is good and completely natural).
mattkevan 8y ago
The Design Museum in London has pretty much everything Jony Ive ever designed in their permanent collection. They certainly are art in this context.* And I'd argue that Apple are one of the few tech companies that genuinely view their products as art objects, as well as being boxes of mass-produced consumer technology. * There's a wider question about whether the mere act of displaying something in a gallery makes it art, but its one that many fine art postgrads haven't been able to get to the bottom of yet :)
- flanban 8y ago
  I would argue that the fact it's in a design museum rather than an art museum makes it design in that context. Speaking very broadly: Designers manifest other people's ideas for money. Art is more when you bring your own ideas into the world because you want to.

oytis 8y ago

That's how industry works. I don't know the details of Iphone business model, but they could in theory let all the components be manufactured by Tier-1s, let all the software be written by outsourcers, let the design and integration be done by someone else and only leave branding and marketing to themselves. But I would kind of expect of an artist to be a little bit more than self-brand manager.