What is the interpretation of design?
If design exists as a feature of culture life, what is it? Is it, as civil engineer Henry Petrosky suggests, the dissembling and resembling of the parts of nature? Or is it, as Nobel Prize-winning economist and scientist Herbert Simon suggest, a new domain best described as the science of the artificial? Or is it others suggest, a new form of communication? The possibility of meaning has led to diverse ides and claims about design.
Through my research until now, I fount a lot of arguments about the definition of graphic design and what is graphic design for? ”
I read an interview of John Maeda (An American designer), and at the question “what is graphic design for?” he answered “ Graphic design is not an art. It may look like art but it isn’t. Graphic Design is the collaboration between a designer and a client to creates is a bit of advertising and promotion material. What a graphic designer creates is a bit of marketing propaganda, a piece of folk art for technological merchant culture, a factional statement promoting a product, a candidate, an event. Once that factions end-the product discontinued, the candidate forgotten, then event over-then what it is?
It’s not art, it’s an old advertisement. I say it is a cultural artifact. Graphic designers don’t produce art, they produce artifacts.”
So… what is graphic design anyway?
Georgia Evagorou
Great quote from John Maeda, I'm trying to think how I can disprove his viewpoint, but am finding it difficult – (trying my hardest to disagree with him). I have always thought of myself as a communicator, but Maeda's comments make us sound more like dinosaurs with work that's being uncovered by archaeologists. I agree with his point, but still believe that graphic design has artistic value as well. If we look in particular at the Bauhaus movement and how early modernist work is now displayed in galleries. Is this not art? Look at the example of the Theo van Doesburg exhibition that's running at the Tate at the moment. There's more than one room dedicated to the art of typography and design in that exhibition and in my opinion created the most beautiful exhibits on offer. Is this not art? Are these not the stained glass windows that Beatrice Warde describes in her Crystal Goblet piece?
ReplyDeleteThis question returns to the question highlighted in class by Russ, what is the difference between graphic design and art. As Russ proved himself, this is not an easy question to answer and surely this in itself reveals more about the artistic value of graphic design than anything else. Russ suggested that the difference was in how many copies are made. Graphic Design is designed to be reproduced in hundreds and thousands of copies in the form of magazines, posters and packaging, but this does not help classify one off design like sign posts, shop fronts and mapping signs. True, these are not objects that would not be classified as art ordinarily, but why not.
Look at the example of silk screen prints that people buy to put on their walls. If you walk along the Columbia Road in East London (venue for a great flower market) you will find two shops next to each other selling screen prints. Can these prints be classed as one offs when they do not display any mistakes and when the first (1/50) looks identical to the twenty eighth (28/50). This can easily be classed as an art form because people are buying these pictures to become permanent displays in their home, but many of them slip into the realm of graphic design. Screen prints of poetry and quotes that have been elegantly rendered with typographic skill are clearly examples of graphic design and illustration, and does this not make them art as well? The fact is that there is a very blurred line between art and graphic design. For me, this line is not so blurred because I see graphic design as both an art form and an 'artefact' (agreed and disagreed with Maeda at the same time). I believe that graphic design should be a thing of beauty, a pleasure to look at and because of our creative input described as art.
Jonathan