One website dares to ask the question…is graphic design art?
I don’t know about the whole field of graphics design. But I think of web design as closer to designing a car than to creating art. Websites are meant to be used, not just appreciated. Design isn’t art. Design is, well, design.
2 Comments
11/13/08
I guess if you think that art’s sole purpose is to simply be appreciated, and that as soon as you add function it’s not art anymore, then maybe you’re right.
However, I see no reason why “art” can’t serve a purpose other than existing for it’s own sake. I doesn’t need to serve a purpose, but it can and still be art.
11/13/08
Who’d have thought that it would be so hard to define this kind of thing. I’ve always thought art had to stand alone as itself. For instance, if you were to say a car design is so good that it is a piece of art, you don’t mean the car drives well, but that it exists on it’s own as art. The car could not even have an engine–and it wouldn’t matter, because the fact that it is “a piece of art” has nothing to do with how well it behaves as a car. Right?
Dan Bowling is a web designer in Missoula, Montana.
Copyright © 2007 Dan Bowling. All rights reserved.