A previous mentor in my design career told me:

Design is Art to a grid.

Given no further thought this sounds like a reasonable description. But in my option it is very wrong.

I loved this statement at the time – as a budding young and naive fresh faced designer I preferred to think of myself an artist to a designer. In fact, I did think of myself as an artist.

In reality whilst I was taking a lot of pride in my work, it was and still is based on briefs with the goal being to satisfy the clients wants and needs – sometimes regardless of your opinion the finished design and choices made.

Obviously we all have a responsibility as designers in the ideas we present to clients and to educate to the best of our ability whilst aiming to stay diplomatic, avoid patronizing and coming across as arrogant.

It is only a handful of times in my career have I ended up with work ‘signed-off’ that I am unhappy with. This generally means I’ve either been slack with the ideas I presented in the first instance and fallen down a rabbit warren of undesirable amends – or simply it was a client I couldn’t agree with.

Either way at least partly my own fault and something tough to deal with as a designer, as an artist though, surely that would be destroying?

Experience has changed my perspective, how I view myself and my work as a designer as well as that of my peers.

I can now look at my own work and that of other designers and understand decisions that would have occurred during the design process, looking a design in a more mature and less critical way. After all design is full of limitations that art does not have, materials, format, medium and perhaps budget.

I believe:

Design is not Art to a grid.

• Art has no content, only a subject. Art is ‘free‘.
• Design is primarily content coupled with the subject to give the ‘feel’. Design must have function foremost.

Both, however are subjective.

Take designing a website for example:

• A client will have a reason for needing one; an online presence, to present information about their business online, to solve a problem.
• Your job as a designer is to make the website functional – easy to navigate and present the information clearly in a easily digestible and ascetically pleasing manner.

The same applies to a leaflet, piece of direct mail, vehicle signage – you should make it visually appealing and functional, being a successful designer means understanding this and using your experience to meet the brief and solve challenges creatively.

Art attracts my clients.

Some designers will have their own style and attract work through this, their style is their art. These designers do create art in their own time and could be contacted through this to create similar work as design.

Designers who work like this I would argue are closer to being an artist than most – they convey their own style through their work constantly and have less room (or requests) for compromise and adaptation.

One down side to this I imagine would be limitations on the design work clients would approach you to undertake – for example this may be for a logo or event identity rather than a magazine layout or website.

Designers working within their ‘own style’ are still not producing art – because they still work to a brief – they will still have content, subject and restrictions.

I believe art is not produced to a brief – art is created for self satisfaction first and foremost.

Nor is being an artist all you need to be a good designer.

A designer must understand typography, colour pallets, heirachy, the medium in which they are producing for and also understand people – in order to negotiate and educate your clients.

As a designer I am influenced by the world around me, my moods, my emotions, the work of my peers and the artists I appreciate. I love to create work I can be proud of – creating something I think is ‘cool‘, something I can look at and think ‘wow, I did that‘. Which is a daily battle in the career of a designer.

Presenting work you love to clients can be dangerous, it can be disappointing, maybe they’re too conservative, maybe you were just wrong. After all they came to a designer, not an artist.

The truth is I can’t stop presenting the work I think is ‘cool‘, the work I love doing – if I did I would no longer be any good at what I do, I would stop evolving as a designer.

What I can do is learn the right clients, the right way to present my more ‘out-there’ ideas to clients – continue to experiment, to create art in my free time so I’ve always got something to pull out the bag when the right client or brief comes along.

What is design to me?

Design is creative problem solving based on experience. But. To be a successful designer you must also be passionate about the ‘art’ you see in your life and be influenced by the world around you.

You must love what you do and to love what you do sometimes that means creating art.