On feelings & emotions

Praise,

"The designer's art is logical", I tell myself to sleep whenever I tried to ruminate on a dozen things that hurt me at any particular time.

An insult, or the lack of it. an action, some disappointment, jealousy, envy maybe—a Pandora jar full of 'em.

I'd smile at the irony that is the designer's art.

"We solve problems, we achieve results", I'll follow up with the usual points. I'll even bring receipts. My portfolio had always done justice to this. "Design is not art", the argument would ring loudly in my head.

At this point, it's a peaceful turned heated conversation—all in my head. I'd try to be neutral and find the point of the confusion. What was I talking about in my head? What was the nerve of contention?

Click!

I was fighting hard to be Bruce Wayne—rich, extremely talented and genius. Isn't that the basest instinct for all of us, designers? Alongside, I wanted to do it alone, lonely and quiet [read, sad].

Why? It seemed cool, that's why.

Praise,

Design isn't art. Yet, we never truly understand why this narrative has been pushed so hard, when its opposite does no harm to our craft, one we're deeply proud of.

"What is art?', I asked, "what equation are we alienating design from?"

"An expression of ideas, thoughts through any form of matter is ART", I replied.

"Yes! Any form—sound, sight, touch, taste, smell"

Hence, thousands of individual disciplines attribute themselves as art (better still, an art). Music, food, paintings, architecture, sculptures, philosophy, mathematics, etc because in one form or more, they express a certain perspective of reality.

The unilateral, irrefutable expressions is what makes science. Yet, despite being put at different poles of a spectrum, these supposed terms start the same way—abstract, from an idea.

It's called hypothesis in one, inspiration in the other.

Mary Afolabi once said "let's find the sweet spot", an interesting argument calling on the designer to embrace his artistic side.

True logic doesn't falter. 2 + 2 will never become anything other than 4. If design is truly logical, then all problems would have the same solution, irrespective of other abstract factors.

What makes design work is the art that it is—the inspiration for that logo, the observation of people, the colour it adds to people's lives when it actually works, how it seems unnoticeable when it works.

Taking your client's idea and filtering it through your experiences, knowledge, emotions to producing stellar work is not a result of logic.

Design isn't just solving problems. Design is YOU SOLVING PROBLEMS.

The "you" factor is what makes it so intriguing an art.

All the relics we call art today had some of them solving particular problems at their point of creation.

Whether those problems included pacifying an ego, elevating status, beautifying a home, keeping a journal, building a palace, marking a region, creating security, winning a war—the solutions we'd have called design centuries ago, are what we call art now.

Design is art. Better put, design is an art.

Yet, while some might disagree, it doesn't change that fact.

Emotions make all the difference.

Selah.

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