Am I an Artist?
“Six years ago, I didn't even know what design really was. All I really knew was how to sketch, measure, mix colors, create shapes, utilize line, and perfect craftsmanship.”
“Do you ever think that you could be an artist again?”
Someone recently asked me this question. I sat for a moment and thought to myself. After a few moments I responded, “No I don’t think I’d have the patience.”
There was a time in my life when all I wanted to be was an ‘artist.’
“When I grow up, I’m going to paint in Paris,” I would tell my mom as I sat at the kitchen table with my watercolors. I kept this dream close to my heart until I was about 18 years old. I remember standing in the art classroom as a senior and picking up my final portfolio of work. I had taken the Advanced Placement Art Course two years in a row and was bored. I looked down at my portfolio and saw a note from my teacher. It read,
“What are you going to do with your talent? Will you become an illustrator or a graphic designer?”
‘Well’, I thought to myself, ‘I hadn’t thought about either.’ As I write this now, I almost have to laugh to myself. Six years ago, I didn’t even know what design really was. All I really knew was how to sketch, measure, mix colors, create shapes, utilize line, and perfect craftsmanship.
Six years ago, I knew a lot. I think it’s really easy to forget almost all of those things. How many designers today (and I include myself in this group) sit down at their computers and immediately try to create the masterpiece. If you told a painter, “Hey, I need a detailed oil painting of my childhood home to give to my mother for her birthday. But I need it, like, ASAP,” they would laugh at you.
I’m not suggesting that art and design are mutually exclusive. I do believe that, as designers, we need to assess our projects and find the balance in our involvement. There will be projects where we will have more artistic freedom and other projects that will be very straightforward.
We aren’t just operators of software or vector-making-machines. We’re well rounded. We enjoy reading, learning new skills, we speak multiple languages, appreciate great food and music, and we create art. We need to remember that we ARE artists.
What are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagree?
David Bushell
I love this article! So often we get caught up in the business, client and customer views that artistic license gets sidelined. I’ve written about designing for clients (not myself) but I always remember that sometimes very personal touches are appropriate. The web design industry in particular can be so uptight about user experience and metrics that any subjective opinion is seen as criminal. An artistic point of view is just as valuable.
Emma Simpson
I so relate to this path to becoming a designer. To me design is visual problem solving. It must always be appropriate and relevant but we employ our artistic flair and talent to answer these problems creatively in an inventive and aesthetically beautiful way. It is possible to be self indulgent but that indulgence must be questioned continually as to if it’s appropriate to the brief.
Being an artist however is a license to be purely self-indulgent, obscure and to answer to nobody but yourself.
The skills and tools used to create both art and design are the same.
David
Your article is very interesting because I often asked that same question to myself. But in the end, I answered that the difference between an artist and a designer is communication. The former expresses intrinsic needs or emotions and the latter has to translate a message to a wide audience so it is understood. But neither can I say that the designer isn’t a little bit of an artist in some way…
Thomas Moffett
About two years ago I decided that after 15 years of design I was going to re-establish myself as an artist and see if that would help re-invigorate me as a designer.
It has! I can better deal with the constraints of design because I feel the freedom as an artist when I step away into my home studio where I don’t even allow computers.
I still work professionally as a designer but my hobby is now my art which makes me a better designer. I think the two are important to becoming either a better artist or designer. The roads are not separate but the same road.
Brandon Moore
when i was in college one of the head guys in the design department (makes up the curriculum) made a comment that “good art is well designed, and good design is artfully done”. i now use that as sort of a mantra on my personal colateral. it really struck me and gave definition to who i was going to be as a designer.
i believe the only true difference between art and design is that ‘art’ is done for yourself, while ‘design’ is done for someone else. i judge a piece of art and design on the same principals. they use the same elements. i believe they have way more similarities than differences
and painting in Paris sounds amazing! :)
Allison
I’ve loved reading all your comments and it’s helped me realize the differences between designing and creating art. I also agree that being an artist can only improve your skills as a designer. Art can be just as smart as design though, right? Would you agree on that? Or is it all based on emotion/feeling?
Ken
We’re definitely not ‘vector-making-machines,’ as you put it. It’s quite a disappointing reality wherein most designers are treated more like laborers working in a ‘fastfood design shop’ rather than be seen as design professionals who actually know what we’re doing. It’s work like that which rids the innate sense of artistry we have. Sad.
Jesús Acuña
Great Article!! Well I’m writing this opinion as a graphic design fan, but not as a designer. I do believe graphic designers could be consider the “neo artists”, unlike artists you guys are forced to get a result within a timeline, and thus some may say you are not able to print your feelings in your work, but that’s a lie.
I see a graphic designer as a creative person, that must be able to translate a client’s need, it may even be the client’s feelings into a piece of art. But then is your work only what the client thinks he/she needs and feels? If it was like that, we would have horrible magazines,ads,websites,etc. That’s exactly where the graphic designer’s emotions and feelings come in, without it your work would be plain, and if you were simply machines then wouldn’t a software do your already?
Are you an artist with restrictions? Maybe. Does that mean you won’t an influence to the people? I believe you reach more people than a normal artist ever could.
So please, don’t become an artist. :)
Natalie Tuckwell
“Artists use art to solve or express their own problems, Designers use their art to solve other people’s”.
I’ve always felt strongly that there is an element of service in design: without clients, end users or deadlines we are artists who are going to design beautiful things (quite slowly) without purpose or payment, for a knowing design-literate elite.
That said, I’ve been encouraged by the recent trend towards the traditional skills of painting, drawing, printing and craft skills. I agree this makes us better all-round designers, and help us remember the joy of those early art classes.