Making decisions is tough. Personally, I tend to be an incredibly indecisive person; I’ll beat several ideas to death before I even figure out which one I wanted in the first place. Honestly, it’s not a good system to have. Whenever I’m making decisions for, say, 60 drawings about lines, I’m usually too afraid to just say “Okay, I’m doing this and it’s going to happen right now”, and end up saying something more along the lines of “Okay, here are twenty different ways to draw one concept, but which one is best?” In the readings, they talk a lot about how designers can borrow from other mediums or even just invent something new to accomplish a certain goal. For instance, Panton made a chair that had never really been done before, and in doing so challenged a certain status quo. However, I feel that decision often take inspiration from other situations, as well — I may have twenty-something ideas, but based on my restraints and what I’ve done in the past, I can narrow those ideas down a whole lot. Perhaps my decisions aren’t based on anything substantial, per say, but I do feel like they are definitely based on the situation I’m in and my past experiences.

Similarly, I find that determining whether something is “working” a rather complex action. I think, to some extent, it comes naturally to me. However, I believe that a lot of the exposure I’ve had to filmmaking, photography, and audio-video production give me a lot to go on when determining the quality of something. For instance, in my own personal projects, or even my writing, I try very hard to avoid awkward situations that can confuse the audience. I feel like if whatever I’m working on can help the audience understand my work as a whole, it’s a good idea that serves a good purpose. Similar to the biogas made by Superflex, if something is functioning as it should be, yet not a jarring eyesoar, it works.

When something refuses to work, I refuse to start over. I’ve never been one to go back to the drawing board when something goes awry; I power through and try to really control what’s going on in a project, rather than the other way around. If it’s something as simple as, say, audio leveling in a video, it’s easy for me to adjust the work to meet my needs. However, if it’s something complex like a sequence of events in a book that aren’t quite fitting together nicely, I try to look at the elements in the work in a different perspective. Sometimes I feel like I’m sifting through the plastic bad of edits like Lauren van Deursen, looking for anything that might reinforce my ideas and possibly could be added to the piece. All in all, I try to fix what’s superficial and meaningful without uprooting the foundation I’ve already laid down.

What a very stressful question!

I think, at least initially, I didn’t see much difference in the two. Can’t an artist design something? Isn’t what a designer makes still art? Well, maybe that’s the case, but I think that there seems to be a clear division in society. It seems that artists are meant to create things that are intriguing or deep, while designers take artistic principles and craft them into something practical or functional.

Again, I’m not too sure I agree with that, but I suppose a line needs to be drawn somewhere. As Donald Judd put it, that’s why we don’t find furniture in art exhibits.

I think that maybe, just maybe, an artist and designer are the same thing. Perhaps an artist can design and a designer can create art. Artists create their works in order to make an audience feel something; to transcend. Designers, I believe, are still trying to make an audience feel something through their works. Even in advertising, isn’t the goal of a billboard or a company’s logo to convey a certain message? With aspects like color theory and even the most basic elements of psychology pouring into art, isn’t their bound to be unified themes and goals on both sides?

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If left with the question, “Are you an artist or a designer?“, I think I’d much rather jump into the nearest bush and avoid it, but I can’t help feeling I do need to make some kind of decision.

I believe that in the grand scheme of things, I’m a designer. Yes, I am capable of making art, and I’m capable of making others feel what I want to express through my work, but I also have a love for the technical aspects of life, including graphic design. If I wanted to further complicate my answer, I would elaborate on the fact that I am constantly battling between this and a need to express myself. While I feel I am perfectly capable of adhering to a client’s vision, or even just designing something as minimalist as a website’s border art, I feel that there’s a lot of creativity to be wasted in such endeavors. In truth, I’m moreso a designer and an artist.

I think that, at its core, art truly is separate from design. If one were to see a particularly moving animated movie, they would consider it art; you wouldn’t call a movie functional. Perhaps everything serves a purpose, but not so much has a function. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard for me to define my own stance; regardless of capability, it comes down to whether one wants to have their work be functional or moving. To me, there seems to be a great difference, but they’re not entirely separate. You need a little bit of a mixture to really do your best, I think.

Then again, I could be entirely wrong.