These terms are frequently mixed up. Not by what their meanings are but by what they signify. Of course a design doesn’t necessarily have to be a work of art, however it can display some form of art. Again can art contain some form of design? To understand where both terms stand in relevance to each other we must know what each term really means.

What is Art?

According to wikipedia:

“Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music and literature. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as Aesthetics.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

What we understand from this definition is that Art is either a process or a product of a composition that appeals to our senses. The keywords we can grab from this paragraph that defines Art are “process, product, composition, senses, emotions”

The relevant definition for Art from wiktionary is:

“The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colours, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium. ” or

“A re-creation of reality according to the artist’s metaphysical value-judgements. “

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/art

The keywords we get from these definitions are “elements of sound, colours, forms, movements etc., sense of beauty, production, and graphic/plastic medium, creation, reality, artist, metaphysical “.

Another description from Merriam Webster is:

“The conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects ; also : works so produced”

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/art[2]

Here we have a different set of keywords, such as “conscious, imagination, works produced, aesthetic objects”.

If we combine the keywords from these definitions we can get a statement like: “Art is a concious process derived from the creative imagination of producing a product of aesthetic value that appeals to the senses or emotions.”

Now why did we do this? We want a definition of Art that is not just according to one source. We want to now what Art means in general. And now we know that it is a process or the product of an object which appeals to the senses and it can be in any plastic or graphic form. But we don’t know if there is anything else Art can do, other than appeal to the senses or emotions.

Now after reading these definitions of Art let’s see have a look at what Design is.

What is Design?

You can read a more detailed article, “What is design?”  on another post of mine. But for this argument lets research some definitions from online sources.

According to wikipedia

“As a noun, “a design” is used for either the final (solution) plan (e.g. proposal, drawing, model, description) or the result of implementing that plan in the form of the final product of a design process^“

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design}

Merriam Webster defines Design as:

“a: An underlying scheme that governs functioning, developing, or unfolding : pattern , motif <the general design of the epic> b: a plan or protocol for carrying out or accomplishing something (as a scientific experiment) ; also : the process of preparing this”

“The arrangement of elements or details in a product or work of art”

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/design[2]

Here we see that design be a little bit more technical. According to the definitions Design is more about how you get to the final product, it is the route by which you choose to take. And you can also say it is the final product of the process as a noun. It has nothing to do with appealing to the emotions, but it can please us if it takes us to the final product with ease. I think that we can say the answer of the question “What is Design?”  is “The process chosen to produce a product?” and “the product itself”.

Is Design a kind of art?

If design is a process leading to a product and art is a form of aesthetics then we can state that Design is a product with a touch of artistic value. According to Vitruvius, a roman architect, engineer and writer (born c. 80–70 BC, died after c. 15 BC) Design is when form (venustas=beauty) meets function (veritas=truth). We can also say that when we find an aesthetic side to technology we can say it is an aesthetic, pretty, beautiful design.

Can Art be designed?

Now we can ask the last question “Can we design an art object?” Well I think the answer is quite obvious. Why can’t we? Isn’t an art object a product in the end? And don’t artists plan the process to get to the final product? However It wouldn’t be fair to say that art is design as a product since we need a function other than appealing to the senses and emotions. So as a result, we can say that art can be designed but we don’t end up with a design as a product, but a work of art.

For further reading, you can look up this subject following the links below:

http://www.unc.edu/~jbrady/Essays/Art_Design.html

http://jonathanbaldwin.blogspot.com/2004/05/graphic-design-is-not-art.html

http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/001362.html

http://www.ablestable.com/resources/library/thecolumn/2004/019.htm

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=931484

http://www.artbistro.com/topics/7615-the-differences-between-art-and-design/posts