Importance of classifying the idea of art and design

               For a significant amount of time, the debate over whether art and design are different or whether they should be classified as one and the same has raged on. The issue has been discussed mostly by academicians and people who are interested in joining one of the two fields in school or as a career. For most professionals in the field, they are aware of who they are be it artists or designers. While some designers would consider themselves to be artists due to the nature of the work they present, artists hardly ever refer to themselves as artists or classify their work as designs. While the discussion continues, it is becoming clearer that clarifying the idea of art and design is of great importance. One factor that has led to this revelation is the difference in cost between the sale of art and designs.

            When an artist decides to work on a piece of work, there are various factors that act as the motivation behind the final piece. The same case applies for designers as they all attempt to have the desired effect through their work. For artists, the motivation may be to inspire the audience, invoke a form of critical thinking or to express oneself through the art . Designers on the other hand are motivated by one specific agenda which is to get the audience to perform an action such as purchasing a product. While art leaves the audience to interpret the work presented in their own ways and get the message that gets to them from viewing the art, design has one specific message that is expected to be received uniformly by everyone who sees the design. With different interpretations, different people will place a difference sense of value on the art depending on what level it speaks to them. In the case of design, the value will be common as the message is received in the same way by everyone (Duvall, 2016).

            Since people will have a common sense of value for designs but variations in the value of art, it is of the outmost importance that a clarification of the idea of art and design be established. Often times, pieces of art have been sold for millions of dollars while designs only fetch a few thousands of dollars due to the value people place on them. The Card Players , a series of oil paintings by Paul Cezanne is estimated to cost over 259 million dollars. Pablo Picasso’s, La Reve , which is a painting of the artist’s lover, Marie Therese, who has her eyes closed while seated on a red arm chair is estimated to cost over 155 million dollars (Winkel, 2014). Designs on the other hand cost lesser such as the Olympics logo which cost 625,000 dollars and the NeXT logo designed for Steve Jobs for 100,000 dollars.

            Although both art and design are respectable fields that serve a specific purpose, it is important to classify the idea of art and design as it would help to ensure that professionals in each field benefit accordingly. As an artist, there is the possibility that one will make millions from a piece of work depending on the value placed on the art by its audience. This is possible because people have a deeper appreciation for art and paying such huge amounts of art is acceptable. However, failing to classify these two ideas may result to the artist losing out despite having created high value artwork. If people assume that art and design are the same, a piece of art may fail to sell as much as people may view it as a design and therefore not pay as much. While paying millions for art is acceptable, the same does not apply for design since most of the money is spent on the product that the design is intended to sell.