Art and Design?

(Impressionist Claude Monet's Water Lilies)

How do we differentiate art and design?

People usually think of the word “art” as fine art or art studio, which includes basic drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography, and more. The arts are developed with the aesthetic concept of artwork since ancient times. For example, the Impressionists in Europe studied the aesthetics and the relation to realism beauty.

Whereas, Design is the planning and idea that often connects to the usage of art skills. Design is often being categorized as a contemporary field of design. For design, the actual art studio skills or aesthetic art skills are not as important than the composition and idea behind the work. Art is often a supporting rule for design.

However, design is sometimes developed simultaneously with the making of arts. Many artists might start designing with an inspiration of an object.

Since the ancient years of human’s history, people have had the ability to create compositions, and then it is just about the practice of aesthetic fine art skills. In enchant Egyptian culture; they had all the walls full of drawings and ideas. Every culture has their unique style, but it all connects back to the basics of composition and art skills. And during the 19^th century art movement, the Impressionist style was much different from the aesthetic realism paintings and sculptures. Impressionism includes the style of small but thick brush strokes, and artists started to emphasize compositions.

So how do we know the difference? Sometimes the dominance of fine art is stronger in a work, and sometimes design has a stronger dominance. Art makes a closer connection to the resource or material of making a work; whereas, design has a closer relation to the idea behind.

Art and design are related. but not interchangeable.