Hi Folks
please read What Is A Designer for next Monday.
For Wednesday, bring sketches of your plan for your box project. Wear shoes appropriate for the woodshop-- I will continue our demo after we talk about the plans.
-Shannon
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10 comments:
An artist is more like his or her own impresario, culture diffuser, culture generator, and can even be an assistant or parasite. An artist uses a studio as a factory for their work, where a designer uses a collaboration of many people to create, critique, work within parameters, that satisfy themselves and the others that that will utilize their designs. When I look at the big picture, the article is right in the sense that all professions or crafts are an art to be perfected and mastered as the artist gets older and better.
What is a designer poses an interesting question. As a Graphic Design minor holder, I have always viewed a designer as very under appreciated artist. My main reason for having such a dismal opinion of a designers under appreciation is because, unlike a studio artist, they are rarely working with the actual materials themselves. I have always looked at a designer as an artist, I just think the world or culture they live by allows their work to go under appreciated, until recently.
To answer this question seriously we have to have a common understanding of what artist is and what art is; opinions differ. As to what is a designer, it is much easy to define; it is just a profession. What constitutes the work of designer? Who needs design? This varies fordifferent cultures: in some cultures every pice of household utensils, every piece of furniture, every building is necessarily a piece of art; so in this culture design is an art; in other cultures designers just plan the layout of objects keeping in view their social function: a chair for a nobleman should be guilded, and white dress means clean intentions; if the society's tastes requires as much beauty as possible per square inch, small items considered beautiful (that is, guilded) are crammed without any consideration of taste. These are two poles of course; and what is design in the first culture, say, a stone garden, may be considered as just an empty place covered with sand in another; so - what design?
What I want to say, to perceive design as art, and to appreciate good design, the society has to be developed in a certain style; otherwise the job does not differ from the work of a waiter arranging plates and forks on the customer's table.
It seems to me there are artists out there whom as soon as they become big and famous take on the roles of a designer by contracting out work and just coming out with the concept. I suppose the only difference is they work for themselves but even so they do have to submit aprovals and go through the political museum process.
I see myself on occasion in the role of the "Cultural Diffuser". I can touch on a bit of everything and create it.
I can't tell if Potter is trying to insult students by saying "the word student; therefore, I mean those who still question what they are doing and ask why." Is he saying that students are too indecisive to declare themselves artists? The tone sounds a bit condescending much like the rest of his article. Such that he want to paint a picture that being a designer is constraining and almost a poor story for an artist. I see the constrain of the designer mainly in industrial design, product development and interior design.
He missed out on speaking of the designer as a translator for the layman. Why else would someone pay for this creativity? It can be seen as an art of understanding.
A designer can make careful consideration by using his or her own judgment. In a verb meaning, it marks out or plans, purposes, or intends. In terms of a noun meaning, it describes as a plan conceived from the mind or adaptation of means to end. Some designers carry out their own ideas. Others conceive from their actions. Some design problems may occur. A solution could bring ideas to the problem. For instance, discussions, agreements, letters, or visits would demonstrate a recommendation or suggestion to fix it. The best way to make it convenient in groups is to separate them into three types of design categories. There are three simple categories: 1) product design based on things; 2) environmental design based on places; and 3) communication design based on messages. Well, I won't forget many kinds of designs and designers which include fashion designers, interior designers, computer graphic design, industrial design, exhibition design, and many more.
Most designers are educated from a three-to-seven year design school in a formal way that would lead to appropriate qualifications. There is a variety of functional classifications for designers: impresarios, culture diffusers, culture generators, assistants, and parasites. Impresarios are people who work, organize tasks, and present the outcome. Culture diffusers are those who compete in working effectively over a broad field, usually from a stable background of dispersed interests. Culture generators are those who are obsessive in working in back rooms in produce ideas, often more useful to other designers than the public. Assistants are mainly beginners, but also a large group concerned with administration or draughtsmanship. Parasites are people who skip the surface of other's work and make a good living by it. Any kind of designer would do, such as fine-art, design (fashion or interior), science, medicine, philosophy, painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, architecture, industrial design, and so on.
In the reading Potter discusses what a designer is. He says that everyone is a designer by nature but only those who persue it are formal designers in society. He says that formal designers fall into three different categories that a designer can fall into. One is product design, another is environmental design, and the other is communication design. These three categories can be vary broad, but the more aesthetic and sensory they become the more they resemble fine art. Designs can also be made for science.
He also discusses impresarios, culture diffusers, culture generators, assistants, and parasites and how they all work. I was interested in the first four and how they all work together but the parasites are the ones who feed off of others ideas. Designers can shift from role to role depending on experience.
Basically a designer is someone with an idea that he or she can execute.
The author, Potter, separates design into 3 categories by the type of design for designing “things”, designing “places”, and designing “messages.” This kind of classification is common to us as our school separates design into these various fields of industrial design, interior design, and graphic design. However, Potter separates designers by the types of job their do with impresarios—ones who get work, organized others to do it and present the outcome, culture diffusers—ones who do competent work effectively over a board field, usually from a stable background of dispersed interests, culture generator—ones who work in backroom to produce ideas, assistants—beginners, and parasite-ones who skim off the surface of other people’s work.
I think it is interesting to find out that artists is classified by the medium their work in, but designer is being classified by the types of job they do. From my personally understand, the author is saying that a designer is a problem solver and dealing with more complex problem involving human relationship and so on.
To me the biggest difference between a designer and an artist is that an artist actually makes the work while designer can just design it and have someone else make it. An artist is no longer an artist if no art is created. So I guess there is a difference between art and design after all.
The whole of the world is way to complicated to draw some sort of enlightment ideal of separating the professions in nice simple specialties. The failed experiment of specialization is replete in forming the disenfranchisement that leads people in to a misunderstanding and reluctance to explore and create.
One only needs to look at the work of Jurgen Bey's benches and try to decipher if he is a designer or artist to see this point well illustrated.
Bench One: Beldeen van Banken
Bench Two: Day tripper
For me one of the major differences between an artist and a designer is that objects created by designers are ussually a colaboration of many people. Maybe the first sketches and ideas come from a single designer, but that design goes through many other people before the final product is put out into the world. I by no means think this decarades the value of the design, two heads is better than one right?
The real question I think Potter is posing is what exactly is the deffinition of art, and does design fit into that definition? A designer works within a set of parameters and has less freedom of expression than a fine artist, but this is not to say less imagination goes into the work of a designer. Potter writes that if fine art and design both fit under the umbrella of 'art' then we might have to view art differently than in the past. If we use the common dictionary deffinition -- the expression of human creative skill and imagination -- then a lot more than just fine art and design fit into the picture. So why is society so afraid to call design art? If all artist are designers the why can't designers be artists?
This is a subject that I know very well from my previous school. At my old design school (which will remain nameless), this notion of what an artist is and designer is provoked a lot of thought within me. I learned early on what design is, by definition a designer is a "problem solver!" and at my old school, I didn't think that the design students were designing anything for the most part. They were caught up in making things look pretty; not solving any problems, simplify any functions, or inventing a better product. We have a term for this: "Restyling or styling!" Restyling happens a lot, and this is mistakenly labeled as designing.
Even though now I am considered an artist or fine artist, that doesn't mean that I am no longer a designer. On the contrary, I solve problems that arise in my sculpture constantly, because I make complex pieces, there are many times when I have stop and figure out how to make my piece as I envisioned it. Believe it or not, I am a designer when I am doing this. Many artist do problem solve from time to time, but they don't label themselves as designers.
I have to say that the word designer has become a label for stylists, and a very popular on at that. Everyone is a designer these days. Very few people who labeled themselves as designer truly design though. I think engineers design more, but the public seems to honor the "designer" label, and it sells. Unfortunately, that is the bottom line, and this is seen as some form of success. It is, I guess in some lesser way, but fiancial success does not make one a designer, solving problems do!
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