Art and Design

I think the biggest difference between art and design is that design is very specific to a certain context and cannot be interpreted outside of that context. You can not look at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and say that it is a product of bad design. You must look at the context, who it was made for, what is it doing and what is its effect. You can not argue that the design of a baseball is a bad design for a basketball.

Art, on the other hand, is open to interpretation across countless cultures, societies, races, genders, etc. A good artist is able to uncover emotions existing within many different people, which would have been otherwise hidden from those individuals. If a person looks at any famous painting and doesn't feel anything from it, then to that person it is bad art...it has not benefited them in some way.

In response to the readings, in the Norman Potter article I thought one of the key points was that a designer must see a problem before he or she can create a solution. I also liked how he broke down an artist and a designer. A designer puts a lot of effort for someone else's benefit and an artist gets to be a little bit more selfish about his work.

For the Hickey Article, I liked his idea that "the talk" about an art piece is a living body, whereas writing is a documentation or trace of that life but not a substitute. Almost to say that "the talk" is like oxygen for the paintings and they must live off of our vocalized ideas.

In the Eames article, I liked how he emphasized the magnitude of change from small design changes. He pointed out how small design changes can alter some very small aspect of the user experience and the impacts from that experience.