ART vs DESIGN

     Our theories of I.A lecturer, Ms. Sharmila has given us 2 lectures, one is about Beauty in Art and the other one is about Usability of Design on the second and third week of class. On her presentation slides she has explained very well about the difference of beauty and usability. After the 2 lectures, we, students are given an assignment, which is to produce a Powerpoint slides show to talk about our own opinion and views on the topic matters - beauty or usability, which one is more important to us. But first we must find a reader or articles to support our point of view.  And after our presentation, there will be a critique session given by lecturers or the other students.

  

  Once I received the assignment brief on the first week of class, I was kind of nervous and worried because this time our class is actually a combination of Semester 3 and 4 students so is about 20 students. It’s not that big number, but for me I get nervous as I seldom present in front of so many people and I am actually not good in English. Moreover, Semester 3 students are still new to me, it’s quite embarrassing if I give an impression of lousy senior in front of them right? I started to imagine the situation that I am standing in front of my classmates and getting too nervous until forgot everything that I wanted to express. Imagine I will be like “ uhmm uhmm uhmmm…… “and my marks automatically drop to the ground. It’s terrible for me but I wanted to score for the subject. So I was trying so hard to convince myself to be brave.

  

  In my opinion, I actually think that art and design or beauty and usability are the two things that must fuse together to come out with some creation that is useful. It tooks about 3 days for me to look for a supporting readers, half day for me to do the slides, and another half day for me to rehearsal for my presentation. The author is a website designer named Steven Bradley. In his articles, he explained about the difference between art and design and how it’s similar and how important they are when comes together.

   During my presentation, first I talked about how art is not similar to design. Art is something beautiful and has its aesthetic value. Art is free to express out the feeling. Art is like what we can see and also something out of imaginary. It doesn’t mean to be logic. Meanwhile, Design is utilitarian, it’s something need to be worked and has its own function a goal to be achieved. So basically art is about everything and design is more to problem solving. Design is a process with a duration of time. And it’s a project which constrained by budget and client’s needs. It’s a solution for the problem and there’s always. But in some way, art is similar to design. It’s because both are creation and both using similar tools or techniques to produce. For example, we can paint a road sign that is useful, we can also paint an art piece. Both design and art have constrains. Art is constrained by self-imposed while design in constrained by customer’s need.  “BEAUTY” will be the target of both. No one wish to design something that is ugly and useless. Hence both creation must be creative and incredible. As conclusion “there’s nothing wrong with infusing DESIGN with some ART so long as they first and foremost meet the requirements of the design” . This phrase has strongly support my point of view. For me, everything we can see daily is the infusion of art and design, for example: Iphone 6, upholster sofa, shoes, watches etc.

My presentation gone through quite well as I was actually the 3^rd last one to present. And I am not shivering or shaking during my presentation in front of others. What I had in my mind is to settle this presentation and get back to rest. I feel so thankful that I could actually pronounced all the words correctly. Was such a big relief after my presentation. Well, no comments from Ms. Sharmila and beloved classmates. After the presentation, Ms Sharmila did said that all of us did quite well in the 1^st review. So is consider as a big success. But she did mentioned that some of us don’t really share out our point of views but our thoughts are actually follow what the readers’ about. This might be the wrong way of presenting our views as our thought has been influenced by the readers we have chosen. My classmate Yuuki and Kah Wen did quite well in their presentation as they actually shared about what they think it’s really important for them. Yuuki talked about aesthetic value, while Kah Wen talked about usability. Well, it doesn’t mean I was actually doing the wrong thing. But to be honest, I am that kind of fair seeker person so I sincerely think that both beauty and usability are important. Hence I presented that way I wanted to.  That’s all for the first reader review. Hopefully the 2^nd review will be better.