ARTIST VS. DESIGNER

ARTIST VS. DESIGNER

what do these titles mean to you?

SO, I had a bit of a personal revelation this year, and it had to do with these two titles. I grew up focused on drawing and painting, they were my idea of fine art and I defined myself within their terms. I enrolled at Savannah College of Art and Design under the impression I would continue into Painting and Illustration but quickly got turned on to the Fashion and Fibers departments. My thought was always that an artist shouldn't have a problem designing and designing was like "product art" or something. When I found myself responsible for designing clothes, I looked to my inner artist for creativity. 

Sounds pretty straight forward, right?

Well, not exactly.

I discovered a real anxiety would come up through my system every time I had to do my 50 fashion croquis a week; it didn't flow like the way art would for me. The illustrating, that was the fun part. Rendering designs and embellishing my sketchbook was where I felt confident. These pains still didn't tune me in to the inherent differences between artists and designers or how I defined myself by them. Maybe I just thought that I needed more practice designing before those feelings went away. 

Obviously they share a mutual base, heck, the school says in its name that it's for art and design! They both benefit from color theory, art history, business classes, interacting with and inspiring each other. What's different is where their motivations are coming from and the end result they seek. And good lord, you can find yourself some damn opinions on this topic when you google it (I like these guys' thoughts the most)! For me, design is more product-driven, more clearly defined in the message it wants to convey and its purpose. Art is more free-form, more expressive-based.

I came to the conclusion that I am an artist and not a designer, and it felt very relieving to understand that about myself. I probably could be a good designer with practice but I like this inherently-good-already art stuff, ha! Design doesn't do it for me like the way art does. And now I feel like I can 'let myself off the hook' when I think I can just sit down and design a poster or design a dress line. I at least understand not to approach it like the way I approach my artwork. Ironically enough, the knit art I've been working on for the past year feels more like design than any other art I've made, but I would still consider it art. Confused yet?

Alls I'm saying is it felt good to define what they meant for me and how I viewed and understood myself. I know everyone's always getting scared of getting older but I kinda love some of this growing up.