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I think there is a big difference, i’d be interested in hearing more about people who do both. I would like to do both but cannot get into the whole designing for others way of thinking without stifling my creativity.

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

Good discussion is what I had hoped for.
I often find myself in the middle. When I am designing for myself or others I can be bound by the scope of the project having to make sure that it accomplishes the goal/result that the client has expressed.

With art the only thing i am really bound by is a possible message that i am hoping to convey in my piece.

I think that we can achieve great success as creatives (great terminology Lasha) by finding the right time to blur the lines so that we are helping those we design for have great end products that not only look amazing, but meet the needs of the client.

I still hold that designer and artist are not the same, but i do believe someone can be both, and that at times they can cross over into the other.

Thanks for all the comments, and thanks again Graham for the chance to ramble a bit :)

@David
Nice equation… I would say though that art isn’t entirely useless, many people are inspired by it, and it can tell a story, define a historical concept, not to mention that the artist is using it as a means of expression.

i do agree that can definitely be timeless and and poetic.

Aaron Irizarry´s last blog post..Feature - Death to the Movies!

I would put into the pot that the cultural role of art as a motivation to get people to think outside the box and to think about the world in a different way - remember it was the movies of the past - is key to the difference. Design, in contrast, is about creating something for the purpose of consumption - a chair that should be sat on, a car that must be able to be driven, an advertisement poster that must get the message across rather literally.

While there will always be a crossover between art and design it’s often overlooked that the history of art and design are different, for their own reasons. Art need not necessarily be functional, for example. They are just different.

But it’s a conversation that will continue because designers seem to want to be acclaimed as artists. Why I don’t know. I’m married to an artist and they don’t make a lot of money, less by far than designers. The real problem is that for many people art is about pretty pictures and therefore people who make pretty pictures are artists… but that doesn’t necessarily work.

A visit through art history should start to shed light on the difference between art and design, and why both exist.

I don’t consider “designers” equal to “artists”. Nor do I believe “crafters” are “artists”.

However, the methods (process) of creative thinking to take an idea and turn into something; be it hand-thrown pot, jewelry, website, painting etc are similar across disciplines.

Is a composer a musician? The comparisons could go on and on and on with regard to varies disciplines.

Me… I’m both!

One way to differentiate is the level of craftmanship. I would say that designers create “things” and artists create “expressions” but then you have someone like Charles Rennie Mackintosh whose creations were functional pieces of art. In my opinion, only craftmanship can elevate a designer to the level of “artist.”

DAVIDJMCCLELLAND says:
design = useful, means to an end, practical
art = useless, timeless, poetic

Allow me to refine this math..(from how i see it.)

Design= Rigid,Practical, minor use of self creative input.
Art=Conceptual, Formless(organic), Unpractical and uses a more higher self creativity input.

I suppose both are a form of creative outputs. But personally i feel that Design has more rules restriction due to practicality and the “form an function” routine ,where art, has no rules or boundaries.

Anyone who creates should not seek a “definition” or definite label. To define is to limit and a creator should have no limits