This weeks poll saw a massive increase in voter turnout...
The basic question that I had was 'Should Graphic Design be considered fine art?' and the basic answer I got from you people was very divided!
To paraphrase the Black Eyed Peas, where is the [love] unified front?
Basically 12 of you said "yes" - and variations of that, and 53% (14) of you said "NO."
I found this to be very interesting, as always this "debate" between some exclusive "fine art" people ("I've been using colored pencils since I was 3 and my drawings were always used for my mom's potluck group cookbooks" you know who I'm talking about!) and other artists usually ends up in an agreement to disagree.
For me, the hard part is deciding how/why certain art is classified as "fine art."
This Toulouse-Lautrec poster advertising the Moulin Rouge (circa 1890) is a prime example of graphic design, I think we could all agree on that, however it can also be classified as fine art (right...?). If you are of the mind that this is not fine art...then how could you say that this Kandinsky piece 'Squares with Concentric Circles' is fine art, while the TL piece isn't?
I guess somewhat inductive nature of me argument is not as universally applicable as I would like it to be, but basically, to the people that said "NO" - does this mean that there is absolutely nothing that can be classified as both graphic design as well as fine art? And to the people that said "YES" does this mean that everything that is classified as graphic design is "fine art"?Where is Drissell??
For those of you that care, here is the official tally:
Should graphic design be considered fine art?
Yes - 6 (23%)
Depends on the skill of the designer - 5 (19%)
Yes, unless a specialty font is used then, no - 0 (0%)
Only if Helvetica is the font used in the design - 1 (3%)
As long as there is no type at all! - 0 (0%)
No - 14 (53%)
Total votes: 26
Is design a “fine art”?
ReplyDeleteThanks Paul, for the post and poll — I wanted to comment right away, but I needed to ruminate a little on your thoughts.
I felt the poll instrument was somewhat ‘designed’ to be more or less an EITHER / OR choice with the intent of being provocative, for effect (if I’m wrong, please let me know).
Obviously, there’s a great deal of complexity in the question and so I naturally selected something between ‘YES’ and ‘NO’ and responded to the second question 'depends on the skill of the person' — not perfect, but it will suffice.
I’d like to invite all of you to leave a brief comment on what you believe are those ‘gray areas’ that could possibly form the basis for another paper that I’d like to write.
My own experience with the multiplicity of design includes work from the ‘art poster’ to advertising to strictly speaking, ‘informational design.’ And, it seems, the common thing about the conceptual and formal aspects of design is ‘art abstraction’ (Kandinsky) and the keen ability to recognize patterns both visual and verbal.