Art vs. Art-Design vs. Design

Limited production, experimental design has its place, and it is not in industrial design. This genre of work is more similar to sculpture. Like sculpture, limited production, experimental design objects are not intended to be functional but are instead intended to convey an idea, feeling or statement. Like sculpture these objects could be shown in a gallery, or a museum, or collected. They have value associated with value of the artist or designer who created the work.

The limits to art-design are extremely loose yet restrictive. Anything could potentially be art-design; there is no set definition to any aspect of art design. The art-design world invites any artist or designer to create the work that they please and the artist or designer is encouraged to be as experimental as they can be.
This work is then sent through the art-design filter, where anything can enter, but very few things pass through. This filter separates good art-design from everything else and who can be a professional art-designer and who cannot. This filter is the market of art-design, and it is defined by the wealthy critical art-design collectors of the world.

These rules are as follows;
To be a desirable piece of art-design,
The work must be produced on a limited scale.
The work must be innovative in some way.
The work must be beautiful.
The work must have an interesting story.
The work must be made by a “Designer” (someone who becomes their own brand, a person whose image and body of work adds value to a product),
The designer must be admired by the design community.
The designer must be recognized by the big design stores/museums
Ect.

This system defines successful art-design. So, although the limits of art-design are theoretically loose, success is extremely limited. In some ways, art-design is kind of like the world of professional music, anyone can start a band and play as much music as they want, but there are many factors, many factors having nothing to do with talent, such as image, trends, marketability that decide a musicians fame.

Art-design is not industrial design; industrial design deals with mass production and ways to make sure the object will get sold. The objects made by an industrial designer are purchased by many people, are functional, and are sold at stores.

With that said, art-design is strongly influenced by the world of industrial design and the processes of mass production, and if an artist is interested in art-design, an industrial design degree at an arts college is probably the best place for them to get an education.

Personally, I don’t ever feel like an art-designer, I would consider myself an Industrial Designer, or an artist, depending on the project that I was working on. By that I mean that I find a strong distinction between the industrial design process and the art process. From an outsider’s perspective, my art work may be seen as art-design, but I believe this is because of my industrial design background.

So to me, an art-designer is simply defined as an artist inspired by industrial design.