Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Vytas Gaizutis

Vytas Gaizutis — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:58:43 GMT

“Experience has taught me that if overall the team lacks creative and artistic skills, the product is doomed to become unfriendly or inelegant.”

I disagree with this statement. Artistic skills have nothing to do with interaction design or visual design. “Design”, even visual design, is not “art”, even though they share a common touch point in being aesthetically pleasing (sometimes).

Furthermore, I am completely baffled by what you mean by “the impossibilities of science” and by “research and science struggle for elegance”. The heart of science is evidence and reproducibility. It informs our lives in rich and meaningful ways. How does that lack elegance?

Science is not design. It does, however, help us become better designers. An example is the immense body of knowledge coming from cognitive neuroscience, which helps us better understand the basis of visual perception and cognition.

Vytas Gaizutis — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:40:33 GMT

Physics is not chemistry. French is not German. Sky diving is not scuba diving. And design (of human computer interfaces) is not Contemporary Art.

There are huge differences between Design and Art, though there is a fuzzy border between them, just as with thousands of other areas of study. Art is about personal expression. Design is about building products and services that others will use in a practical way and, hopefully, enjoy.

Let’s look at illustration versus painting for a minute. The goal of an illustrator is to convey a specific concept that enhances some other primary experience, such as a novel, magazine article, or an ad. Thus, illustration is at the service of the primary content and not intended to be the sole expression of the illustrator.

Contrast this with a painter, who is generally conveying a feeling, point of view, reflecting on an his/her impression of beauty, or making some sort of social commentary. Unless it’s a specifically commissioned piece, the intention of a work of fine art is to be a form of personal expression. Even though there are edge and crossover cases, it’s important to understand this distinction.

In many ways, design is like illustration in that it also is at the service of people. Designers create experiences that are intended to make people’s live better, safer, or both. The best design also delights. As Don Norman put it, “attractive things work better.” They do because human perception makes it so. Understanding visual perception and cognition is key, and these fall under the domain of design via the process that is followed.

It’s not enough to merely blend some colors and say “Yeh, green looks cool. It will be green.” That my be fine for a digital artwork, but what are the issues with respect to visual perception, the psychological associations to color, cultural interpretations, color-blindness concerns, the character it lends to forms, and branding issues (with respect to the competitive landscape)? These are “design” issues.

Vytas Gaizutis — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:44:27 GMT

“I see programming as an art as well, and science, and, well everything really. The problem is that as design is so close to a fine art..”

CD, If everything is Art then nothing is Art. Despite postmodernism, not “everything is art”. If this were the case, then the word would be rendered utterly meaningless. What would be the point?

Design is a field in it’s own right and a very precise term when referencing, say, the process that led to the iPhone. Design has a rich aesthetic at its core that is informed by many disciplines, including the arts, but is not itself the same as Contemporary Art.

Do we want design to resonate with us and our culture? You betcha. Can objects that were designed be looked upon as Art? Yes. After the fact. The G4 cube can be seen this way as can found objects and broken crockery (a la Schnabel from the 80’s). But the intention of the original “design” was NOT creative expression per se. Rather, it was to meet the needs of customers.