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To be fair, design usually does involve making a company a quick buck. On one level, design is applied art -> involving artistic principles to achieve a specif

by lwhi 16y ago

To be fair, design usually does involve making a company a quick buck. On one level, design is applied art -> involving artistic principles to achieve a specific purpose. Because we live in a highly commercial world, that purpose usually involves making money. What's the difference between art and design? In my opinion; design is prstitution, art is msturbation. Why bother thinking about definitions? Because doing so provides a framework for examining related ideas and concepts. EDIT: removed some letters from two (possibly?) inflammatory words, and reposted - as the post was listed as [dead]. Would this have been the reason? EDIT2: Re. my comparison of art and design, I was being flippant - but I was also trying to highlight motivation without putting either on a pedestal. A designer has to do create work for someone else, for money. An artist creates work for more selfish reasons - to please themselves.

rorymarinich 16y ago
Hahaha. Don't worry too much about being inflammatory. My old HN account was frozen due to my habit of using naughty words; I don't mind them being aimed at me, as long as we can still shake hands afterwards. I do think your art/design comparisons are a bit un-thought-out, obviously. Art can't be masturbation when you do it alongside a bunch of other people. It's more an orgy than anything. Design, meanwhile, would be like prostitution if prostitutes had the option of sculpting you a statue instead of... er, this simile has gotten silly and I'm going to cancel it immediately. The problem with treating design as a strictly commercial enterprise is that the standards required to be commercially viable are laughably simple. I self-taught myself enough about design to be getting paid commissions in my late teens. The ability to simply typeset a paragraph and add padding is so rare (compared to the rest of the populace) that if you've got it and parade it loudly, some people will be convinced enough to give you money. The real challenge of modern design is this: How do you manage to be competent and memorable? Memorable is the challenge, because it necessarily means doing something that nobody else is doing. Which is hard. On the Internet there're maybe half a dozen people who are able to be reliably memorable — and we'd disagree if we started naming which people we thought counted. But a part of being memorable necessarily means doing crazy things that don't work in an attempt to discover the rare brilliant crazy idea that somehow pays off. You'll never get that if you don't strive higher than is strictly commercially necessary.

by lwhi 16y ago

rorymarinich 16y ago

Hahaha. Don't worry too much about being inflammatory. My old HN account was frozen due to my habit of using naughty words; I don't mind them being aimed at me, as long as we can still shake hands afterwards. I do think your art/design comparisons are a bit un-thought-out, obviously. Art can't be masturbation when you do it alongside a bunch of other people. It's more an orgy than anything. Design, meanwhile, would be like prostitution if prostitutes had the option of sculpting you a statue instead of... er, this simile has gotten silly and I'm going to cancel it immediately. The problem with treating design as a strictly commercial enterprise is that the standards required to be commercially viable are laughably simple. I self-taught myself enough about design to be getting paid commissions in my late teens. The ability to simply typeset a paragraph and add padding is so rare (compared to the rest of the populace) that if you've got it and parade it loudly, some people will be convinced enough to give you money. The real challenge of modern design is this: How do you manage to be competent and memorable? Memorable is the challenge, because it necessarily means doing something that nobody else is doing. Which is hard. On the Internet there're maybe half a dozen people who are able to be reliably memorable — and we'd disagree if we started naming which people we thought counted. But a part of being memorable necessarily means doing crazy things that don't work in an attempt to discover the rare brilliant crazy idea that somehow pays off. You'll never get that if you don't strive higher than is strictly commercially necessary.