Is Design Art?

In the discussion of whether design is art we need to look at the roles, whether professional or otherwise, of artist and designer.A designer, by definition is someone who works to a brief, this can be self directed or given by a client. In either circumstance the designer must work to a set of rules in order to meet the needs of their audience. This means that the designer will have initial ideas, often over-ambitious and beyond the function of their piece, that will have to be restricted by the client.An artist, on the other hand is less restricted and often will do work purely for themselves. This can mean there is less financial security in art, as it may be the case that an artist is creating work for their own personal tastes and simply hoping that other people agree. There are artists who work for commission, and so are working to a brief like a designer, but this will usually be on the back of successful work they’ve done for themselves.It is impossible for a designer to work without applying basic art theories. Even an engineer, a designer whose mind is focused almost purely on functionality, has to think of the basic aesthetics of their work. This relates to the principal that if something is aesthetically unappealing it is badly designed. Using this principle you cannot produce any work of design without thinking about its appearance, although this will almost always come after first planning the functionality around the target audience for the piece.Equally, artists, even the most obscure surrealists, would use fundamental practices of design in their pieces, whether inadvertently or deliberately. Those artists who deliberately break the rules will still have to reference the essential laws of design in order for their piece to have any context, and for others to understand it.A functional piece can, however, be designed with much more of the focus on aesthetics, therefore taking the opposite approach to many traditional designers. This could take the form, for example, of a chair that is perhaps not the most comfortable to sit on, but looks much more interesting than most other chairs. This could perhaps apply in the opposite direction as an artist creating a non-functional piece could deliberately apply every possible design practice in order to create an over the top, functional style.