Artist or Designer: Which side are you on?
While working on a website design with @michelletrevino, I came to the realisation that, while most people think that artistic creativity is artistic creativity, there are different skills and talents needed for different jobs. I knew this on an intellectual level, but a lot of artists tend to forget this when there's something they want to do that's even minimally artistic. Sometimes you'll have multi-discipline artists, especially those who crossover from something graphic or visual to something musical.
However, when it comes to crossing over from a so-called "fine art" or visual art (drawing, painting, illustration, etc.) to graphic or web design, artists tend to be good at one or the other, but not excellent at both. Some people are adequate at both, but it's more common to see someone who does one or the other. Don't believe me? Check out almost any "artist's" website. It either looks like it was stuck in 1995 or it was created by someone other than the artist. Art magazines also suffer from bad layouts and typography, and the ads are never much better.
The reason for this is that while any creative endeavour aims to solve a problem, visual artists and graphic designers employ solutions based on opposite perspectives. While the best work of both takes into consideration the larger picture, with strong, balanced composition and unified color palettes and harmonious elements, graphic designers work very analytically and mathematically, while visual artists work from a more emotional level. The job of each is to tell a story through the composition and elements, but a graphic designer uses rigid structure to convey the idea compared to the visual artist's apparently random placement of details. True, a graphic designer's work may appear to be loose and random, especially when it is a very deconstructed or grunge style, but the placement of each element is still very calculated in order to make the impact the designer envisions. For a visual artist, their elements may appear to be rigidly placed, but that is either due to lack of experience or to create an emotional reaction in the viewer about either the element or the concept. The best graphic design relies on everything being placed pixel-perfect compared to each other element, while the best visual art is achieved due to imperfections inserted into the work as a result of the artist's passion. A graphic designer uses grids, angles and guides to ensure that their work lines up and is symmetrical, but the visual artist knows that symmetry is an artificial construct and so can only be approximated.
This doesn't mean that graphic or web designers aren't artists, just that we all have strengths and talents, and just because someone is awesome at one thing it doesn't mean they'll be at all competent at a different artistic discipline. But that's okay. As the saying goes, "Know thyself". There's room for us all to do what we excel at, so we should be comfortable with our abilities as well as our limitations.
