dakodasmithdesign
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

A huge component of graphic design is knowing your audience. You get a brief, you research, and you design to solve a problem for client who is trying to reach a demographic.

Art is different. Art is at its core an expression. Sometimes those expressions are open to interpretation. Graphic design more often than not works to clarify or communicate a message articulately.

In art these expressions may manifest in similar ways to graphic design. Colour, shape, form, line, and how they are composed may be worked to elicit a response from the viewer, but their motivations vary wildly in the art world. From the outside it can seem like the two seperate visual worlds go hand in hand, but I am of the opinion that even though they communicate the same way, Graphic Design is so definitively an industry.

Artists like Takashi Murakami work to flatten the worlds of high art and low culture, by commercialising his work and even adopting graphic design techniques. Even though the Art world is also commercial, it is considered gauche to speak of. Takashi Murakami works to demolish this taboo and expose it.

This is why over the last few weeks I have had trouble finding a focus in between what may be considered art and how it can be used practically in design.

The trick is to focus on the audience, and the brief. Honing my technical and mechanical art skills should serve to help me open up more creative avenues in meeting these briefs. Creating visual interest using traditional art methods is just another tool in design tool belt.