Design, unlike art, can be good or bad.
Art is (or it should be) a value-free creation. It merely is. The artist had a vision of something and created a physical manifestation of that vision. Because the artist had no particular goal in mind, just the act of creation, no one truly has the right or ability to say art is good art or bad art. In that sense, what's hanging on the fridge is equal to what's hanging in the Louvre.
Designs, on the other hand, can be good or bad largely because of the functional nature of the concept. Looks aside, a chair, for instance, can be well-designed or poorly designed, good or bad, in terms of its ability to function as a chair. Art has no such functional component.
Here is where design gets interesting in a way many in the various design fields may not consider, and it brings us back to my previous point (below, Aug. 11 and 22) that design is not a single concept, but a bifurcated one. I want to expand on my earlier ideas.
Design includes both a functional component and an aesthetic one. Art is concerned only with aesthetics. I heard an Infiniti commercial recently that touched upon the idea that the car must be both functional and beautiful. But I don't hear the functional/aesthetic split discussed much, at least not among the graphic designers I hang around with. I think it helps explain, however, why we see so much bad design.
First, all designs must attain a certain level of functional competency before they can be deemed good or even acceptable. Going back to our chair example, it must be able to function at least minimally at holding up a bent human form to even be called a chair. If you can't sit on it, it isn't a chair. In a sense, this functional aspect of design is integral to any concept and in fact arises instantly with the observation and naming of it. In other words, just by saying or even thinking chair or fan or ad or shoe or building, the functional nature of the item is in play. Everyone can have the ability to judge a design as good or bad on its functional characteristics.
Judgment of the aesthetic side of design is where it begins to get interesting.
Aesthetics, or the theory of beauty, according to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is a huge field that has been around since antiquity. It didn’t really blossom until leisure activities became more prevalent in the eighteenth century, and modern discussions only go back to about the 1960s. I’m no philosopher, and I don’t want to play one on the web. I also don’t want to get into any of the various philosophical arguments about aesthetics, but I do want to side with those who believe it takes a special sensibility, not shared by all, to see beauty. Again, anyone can judge whether a chair or a brochure or a building is good in terms of its functional characteristics and maybe even whether it is gaudy, dull or elegant, which some consider secondary aesthetic characteristics. But the ability to recognize beauty in physical forms is simply a trait that not all possess.
It is, however, a trait that people believe they possess. When someone says a design is good (and most people include both the functional and the aesthetic when they do so), he or she doesn’t believe a personal, subjective opinion is being shared, but that an accepted Truth is being illuminated. When they say, “That is well designed,” they don’t think they are saying, “I like that design” or “I think that is a good design.” In other words, anyone who utters such a statement believes that their personal recognition of beauty in the design of whatever they are looking at is universal and that they are merely stating the obvious. This brings us back around to the plethora of bad design in the world: the marketplace has found it can exploit the notion that everyone has good taste.
Virginia Postrel, in her 2003 book The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetics Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness, said that we are living in an age of aesthetics. She said that, because of improvements ....(more to come)
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