ART VS DESIGN; BEAUTY VS. USABILITY

Art was once used to store and tell stories. It was never meant for expressing oneself. But as time goes by, artists get more and more freedom to express themself. And that changes people’s point of view as well, saying that a good art is well expressed; there’s a strong feeling there, even though sometimes an art doesn’t have to be too emotionally strong but is still beautiful. There is even an art that doesn’t make any sense; doesn’t look pretty and doesn’t have a strong feeling but just because it comes from a famous artist, it becomes a very valuable artwork. This makes me rethink that, when it comes to expressing one’s feeling, you can’t actually explain what you feel rationally.

Design is not art. To design is to balance beauty and usability. To design is to solve problems that go around humans’ needs, to design is so rightly express ideas in an artistic way without ignoring the certain function that will supposedly support people’s lives to the better. It’s clear now, that the difference between art and design is about their purpose and what they’re expressing. Art expresses feelings, design expresses ideas. To make art is to make something that is considered more “decorative”, and to design is to make something that is considered “useful but smart and attractive”.

            When it comes to beauty and usability, both are important. They are intertwined together, beautiful things work better. Beauty makes brand. Brand makes popularity. Popularity attracts people, and people will think that certain brand has a nice design (iPhone for example, which design was similar to the first android phone which came out around a year after iPhone). Another example, when someone sees a web page with beautiful design, they will go through the web page and think that, the webpage is usable because they can easily find the informations that they’re looking for because the design makes it easy to read (as stated before, that design is to solve a problem). But if it’s designed too much with many decorative elements, some will find it annoying and call the web page is poorly designed.

            Everything gets even more confusing. People are different. They have different beauty standards. Some prefer a very clean and simple webpage (like wikipedia for example) while others find it boring. Some prefer a nicely designed web page (like facebook for example). Same goes for fashion. One can like a simple white skirt better, and another can like a floral patterned skirt better. But both will always be considered beautiful and useful; only the beauty part is subjective. So as an overall conclusion, I conclude that art and design is different, but to be a designer, you must have an artistic sense and problem solving skills. An artist can learn to be a designer, but a designer can fill a role as an artist without having to learn professionally. Beauty and usability are intertwined together and both are important for the sake of feasting humans’ needs of new things. Beauty is subjective, but usability is absolute.