Art + Design

Before I came to RISD, I felt like there was a distinct line between art and design. I interpreted design more like engineering and solving functional problems. Art was meant to be experienced, it wasn't functional. Today, having spent 2.5 years in the RISD environment surrounded by artists, I lost that line. And I'm glad I did.

I don't think we as designers would go very far without thinking like artists. Without the inspiration process we go through, (that we do just as if we were artist,) we would always end up with the boring solutions that wouldn't bring an innovation to the way we perceive objects. Most of what we do in ID RISD is based on user groups and if we did think like an engineer and not an artist, all our works would be functional but they would be dry, there would be nothing else to get from our work.

In the presentation last Monday, I enjoyed being exposed to Tobias Wong’s rather obnoxious approaches to design and the video we watched about the voice activated blender “Blendie” because they had successful points of view. I know it’s an extreme approach but we cannot say that these designs are useless because they make people think and they evoke certain feelings in the users or the audience. And this is how design separates from engineering and becomes something more. As Campana Brother’s described in the video we watched in class:

“A designer goes much deeper than function or form. Today, he brings emotion, because otherwise all the chairs, if we have just one chair it would be so boring. So I guess people nowadays they like to have a relationship, kind of interacting with pieces. And for me, design is to bring emotions, bring fun and bring joy to people.”



In my design studios, we always have assignments where we have to design towards certain user groups where it is very marketing oriented. I was never pushed by a professor to go any deeper than the function and form and I didn’t really question it because my mind really worked more like an engineer than it did like an artist. But I somehow felt unsatisfied with the design process I followed in the projects as I developed my understanding of design. There was something missing. In class, seeing the Campana Brother’s and how they explained design brings emotions and joy to people made me feel safe and refreshed. That is what I want to do.

Maybe I won’t be helping the whole society by solving their problems by I will try to make the world a better place by creating design that matters because it evokes feelings in people and makes them feel more alive and also makes them understand the issues in the world. Maybe I won’t be a humanitarian designer in the sense we talked in previous lectures but I will certainly create design that matters.