The Difference Between Art and Design, and What It Means to Name Something

I have a junior colleague, a freelance designer who helps out with our work, and since she was stuck for blog topics, I asked her, "Is there anything you'd want to ask, or any small topic that might be worth writing about?" She replied:

What actually is the difference between art and design, in the end? People say all kinds of things about it, but take a site featured on Awwwards, for example — I can't always read the intent behind the expression, and even looking at graduation projects from a school like Kuwasawa, I sometimes feel a strong sense of "why," though maybe that's just because I don't know the background. I can't tell anymore whether the fusion of design and art is simply the norm now, or whether the two were connected from the very start — I've gone in circles and lost track. (Though I do understand that there are things like UI where it's obviously design, or obviously art.)

She threw this cosmic-scale question at me, and I've been at a loss ever since. She said it to me at the start of March, and I just left it sitting there for about two months.

After that, the impact of COVID-19 grew serious, and we went fully remote. In the midst of a daily life that keeps changing moment to moment, something started to click for me, so I've tried hard to pull it together into an article.

To cut to the conclusion: I believe you can't represent things as points along a single number line running from "more art" to "more design," and there's no point trying to force that representation.

Listing out characteristics like "design is this, art is that" to highlight the difference actually feels like it makes things harder to understand, by oversimplifying two things that are otherwise similar.

Names are incredibly convenient things. A single word like "design" can explain a huge range of phenomena.

Arranging elements, thinking about their relationships as you place them, entering text, tightening up the letter spacing, adjusting the color tone of a photo while cropping it, and then pulling it all together nicely... all of that can be expressed in one phrase: "to design."

When it comes to explaining what design is, the words that resonate with me most are Paul Rand's:

"Design is relationships. Design is a relationship between form and content." From Paul Rand, A Designer's Art | BNN, Inc.

What about art...? I don't know, but whereas design gets used as "to design," you don't often hear "to art" used the same way.

It feels more like something that describes a phenomenon or result that emerges, rather than something done with clear intent.

The reason I'm giving each concept its own troublesome explanation instead of simply comparing the two is that I believe stripping a complex phenomenon down to something simple enough to compare isn't purely a good thing.

Switching gears a bit: to help avoid the spread of COVID-19, the message "avoid the three Cs" has been repeated again and again.

Tokyo has become the place in Japan with the most confirmed cases. It has actively used media, such as a collaboration video with HIKAKIN, and has launched a dedicated site to constantly share information on the spread of infections. As of April 29, 2020: 4,106 cases Latest infection trends in Tokyo | Tokyo Metropolitan Government COVID-19 Information Site

This phrase, the "three Cs" (closed spaces, crowded places, close-contact settings) to avoid, is extremely easy to understand, and having it repeated again and again through media like the above has made it stick quite firmly.

You could say that instead of listing out risky behaviors one by one, a name was given to the situations to avoid as a message that's easier to communicate.

Finding a common thread, simplifying it, and giving it a name — that's exactly what design is. It's a good thing when something is designed and gets across to people. But there can also be hidden downsides.

Yasunori Hada on Twitter: "I made a small correction. I tried to diagram the mechanism by which risk information ends up being conveyed as reassuring information, contrary to the intent of whoever is providing it. It explains how risk information gets conveyed as the 'reverse' of the proposition, and how risk exists on a gradient. https://t.co/v40toKJ7W4" / Twitter

↑ This is a tweet I happened to come across, and it explains very precisely the downside that can come from simplifying a message into a name. It's very easy to understand, so please take a look.

It's rare that something can be explained with a simple structure. Even if you define the opposite of white as black, there's an infinite gradient of gray in between. There's no way to decide exactly where white ends and black begins.

Even if you did decide, you'd just end up with another gradient between the new names.

To add a caveat: I don't think the name "the three Cs" itself is bad. The attitude of unifying the language thoroughly and continuing to communicate it as if trying to imprint it into people's minds is admirable, and I can feel the resolve behind absolutely bringing this situation to an end.

If there's a downside that comes from naming something, it's that the receiver's thinking stops in front of the name. People conveniently interpret it as the three Cs are dangerous = anything else is safe.

Maybe it's fine to go jogging as long as it's not one of the three Cs. But that doesn't mean it's fine to skip wearing a mask.

You need to properly understand why the three Cs should be avoided in the first place. You need to think about why they were given the name "the three Cs" at all.

The same goes for art and design. Sometimes an expression that solves a customer's problem is called art, and sometimes a design made to fulfill one's own desires ends up succeeding as design.

Art and design aren't two ends of a single finite line. Art 100 doesn't equal design 0.

The first thing that's needed is to think about each of them separately, and why they exist the way they do.

I remember Takeshi Yoro saying, on a program called SWITCH Interview: Tatsujin Tatsujin, that "to name something is to cut it."

Here's where it's safe, here's where it's dangerous. Do this and it's design, do that and it's art.

I think cutting up information that's abstract or complex makes it easier to digest. But you might be discarding everything else in the process.

This has taken quite a roundabout path.

Both art and design, whatever they're called, are called that for a reason — they aren't distinguished simply because we lined the two up and found a difference. They're simply different things to begin with, so they've been given different names.

Simplifying things so they can be compared is a valid technique, even within design itself, but if you abandon your own thinking and just accept it as is, it can become poison too.

Conveying something complex to someone while keeping it complex is hard — that's the kind of thing I've been thinking about while working from home.