And I don’t mean to poke holes in simple examples because I understand that the broader concepts that are the main focus of the discussion here, but has anyone else seen the Dyson vacuums and Apple computers on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York? I believe they’re a few floors above the work of Van Gogh, de Kooning, and Jasper Johns. But they’re still under the same roof.

But, I still think that putting thought and attention and love into the design improves the user’s experience. A well-designed site is more pleasant (and sometimes easier) to use, so I think design is important.

Well, that’s a pretty limited view of Art, and one that’s wholly unsupported by actual history. For much of its history, Art was not in any sense about “self expression” or this awful notion of “whatever I feel like at the time.” That’s something that art school first-years need to get beaten out of them and but quick. It might be fun to splash some paint around and feel happy, but that is certainly not Art.

For example, much of the work of Leonardo, Raphael, or other Renaissance artists was not about self-expression, it was commissioned work requiring them to communicate specific themes–often religious or historical–to specific audiences. They made use of visual tools, and occassionaly invented some, in order to carry that job out. They developed styles that allowed them to succeed in a marketplace. They got paid by clients.

It wasn’t really until the mid-19th century that “self-expression” really was a function of art at all, and there’s actually a reasonable case to be made that “self-expressiveness” was itself a response to market conditions that demanded new visual styles. The market’s demand for art objects has only increased in the last 100 years. Go to any big biennial show and look at how stylistic differentiation–”making whatever you feel”–is a solution to visual formal problems and often a marketplace problem: how do I produce work of integrity which also can somehow support me to keep doing more work? And if you think that crass market calculations are not artistic concerns, well, I point you to Andy Warhol and about a hundred others all the way up through Jeff Koons (and about a zillion art students along the way). Hardly any decent artist sits around waiting for some feeling to strike her and compel her to pick up a brush or chisel. Most of them have working processes we’d probably call “prototyping.” Again, it’s all “problem solving” of some sort.

This isn’t to say that art is not about self-expression, but it’s not only about it. Designers should get to know some artists personally, you’d find that you have a lot more in common than you think.

It almost seems that the thought behind “design is not art” assumes that a designer doesn’t use a sense of artistry when designing.  I think that’s what sets the best design apart from the majority of items we’ve all seen lately. 

The designers who practice design with a sense of art, who put love into their work, are the one’s I’d call craftsman.  But I know plenty of designers who see design simply as work, with no love for it.

I think we’d all agree the design with love in it, with a sense of artistry done by a craftsman, is the design that is great.