Product design has long been considered an art form in and of itself, but what exactly is the difference between fine art and product design? Is product design just a subset of fine art, or are the two from entirely different creative planets?
When looking up the differences and similarities between art and product design, I found this quote from Clair Byrd that summed what I was thinking in two short sentences:
“Design requires a function, art does not. Design is results-driven, art isn’t necessarily.”
Unfortunately, real life design isn’t as clear cut as the definitions above make it seem to be. Art and product design are fundamentally different, but have more overlap than you’d probably imagine. Let’s dive a bit deeper into what the essence of art and product design actually are.
Your Audience
When you’re creating anything, you’re creating it for a specific audience. Your audience is ultimately who you’ll be making your art or product for (we’ll talk more about your client later, because they’re pretty important too). The audience is ultimately who you have to please when it comes to creating your vision.
When you create fine art, your audience will expect your piece to be thought provoking, but not necessarily something useful. They’ll come to view your art, but it won’t necessarily serve a function in their life.
When creating a product, your audience will be spending money to use it once it’s fully developed. Yes, the product needs to be attractive enough for them to want to purchase it, but they will ultimately determine if they like it based on how often they use it and how much easier it makes their lives. Being aesthetically pleasing is just a plus.
Your audience determines every decision that you make as a creative since you’re ultimately creating for them. Even if you’re painting a piece to bring attention to a cultural issue or a rendering of a product to streamline a common household problem, you’re making it with your larger audience in mind.
Your Purpose
Your purpose decides how you’ll approach the project as a whole. Before you start creating anything, you’ll have a reason or drive behind your work. The purpose answers the question: “why am I doing what I’m doing?”
Your purpose as an artist differs depending on the piece of art you’re making. Whether you were commissioned for a series of paintings or you’ve come up with a single original idea also influences your purpose. As an artist, your purpose typically focuses on conveying a specific message to your audience, whether that’s a critique of consumerist culture or an homage to Renoir.
Your purpose as a product designer is all about the product and consumer. When products are developed, they’re created to satisfy a need that hasn’t been met yet. Whether that’s making an ordinary product more beautiful or making something existing more user friendly, your purpose is to ultimately create a design of value for the consumer.
Your Thought Process
Your thought process is what drives your entire artistic journey.
When you’re a fine artist, anything can drive your thought process. It can be very sporadic in nature and only needs to come together at the end. There are typically no deadlines that need to be met and you have the freedom to work in the way you want.
When you’re a product designer, your thought process needs to be systematic and organized. You’ll most likely be working with a client that will want to see progress and prototypes as you go along. If you just tell them that the product will be good in the end, chances are, the person that hired you won’t be very pleased. Keeping everything organized and working through a step by step design process is essential.
Your Design Choices
Choices as a product designer or artist are inevitable. You’ll have to choose everything from materials and colors to style and function.
As an artist, design choices depend on the artist’s preferred mediums and what they specialize in. The sky’s the limit when it comes to creating. If you haven’t heard of Rauschenberg, he’s the perfect example of taking anything and creating from it. The choices are made entirely with aesthetics and your purpose as a designer in mind. For example, if you work with recycled materials, your design choices will reflect that.
For the product designer, design choices are all about budget, marketability, and ease of production. Choices are made in a practical and pragmatic manner rather than from a purely artistic standpoint. You’ll want to make sure that your choices for materials are okay with your client and are within their budget. For example, you may be all about using more sustainable products, but your client may not have the budget to make everything as eco friendly as you’d like.
Your Client
Your client is where the money comes from. This is the person hiring you to create, and that gives you the money you need so you can continue making a living as an artist. Without this person, neither the artist nor the product designer would be able to have dinner on the table, so they’re pretty vital to the creation process.
If you’re an artist, you often won’t have a client before you start work. You can try to sell your work to a private collector or a museum once your piece or collection is created, but unless it’s a commissioned work, you’re likely not getting paid up front.
The client of a product designer is the person who has an idea and needs someone to bring it to life. Oftentimes, a product designer will be collaborating with the client to make sure they are creating exactly what the client is looking for. The product designer is working to achieve the client’s goals of making the audience happy.
Your Skills
Though many of the skills that artists and product designers have overlap, each person needs to have a specific set of skills to be the best creative they can be. Both will need to fundamentally see the world in a unique way different from others to help them stand out in their fields. Other than that, their methods of work are very different.
Artists will need a set of technical skills, which varies depending on what mediums they work the most with. Artists will also need to be passionate entrepreneurs in order to sell their work, get into shows, and ultimately make a living. Being an artist is very much a solo endeavor.
Product designers will need a separate set of technical skills, which include 3D modeling and coming up with product specifications. They’ll need great communication skills to create what clients are looking for, and will need a specific type of problem solving skills to create something that is both effective and beautiful.
Your Production
How will what you’re making actually be made? This is one area in which product designers and artists differ wildly and don’t have much overlap at all.
An artist creates their own work. Their hands are creating the masterpiece from start to finish, which means that they don’t need to rely on any other person to make the piece for them. How it’s made and what it’s made of is handled entirely by them.
Product designers rarely, if ever, have their hands on the actual product. They will use software to create plans, their clients will create the prototypes based on those plans, and the product designer will take it from there. Since product designers have to consider the price of production and the cost of actually making the product, production plays a huge part in what design decisions are made. Budget dictates production, which influences the design choices the product designer makes.
How Can Art Help Product Design?
Though art and product design are wildly different at their roots, they both require a creative mind and a dedication to helping others view the world in a different way.
Overall, art is more for the eyes and is usually more thought provoking than product design. Product design is there to serve a function, fix a problem, and have the consumer in mind from start to finish.
That being said, product design doesn’t need to totally be focused on practicality. You can create an ingenious product that looks nothing like anything else on the market and still have commercial success if you have a product designer that’s both innovative and intelligent.
If you’re looking for creative minds with unique ideas, CAD Crowd is the right place for your next product design project. Let us know if you’ve worked with one of our fantastic product designers in the comments below.
FAQs
Differences Between Art and Design
Designs have to solve problems, while art should provoke thought and emotions. Designers work methodically with a data-driven or mathematical process, while artists work intuitively using their instinct. Art is perceptual, while a design is rational.
What is the difference between art and artwork? ›
Therefore I will define “art” as the whole complete package, everything that surrounds an artist, his ideas, his visions and his way of communicating. While I would define “artwork” as a single milestone in achieving that subtle balance between an artist's internal and external worlds.
What is product design in art? ›
In a systematic approach, product designers conceptualize and evaluate ideas, turning them into tangible inventions and products. The product designer's role is to combine art, science, and technology to create new products that people can use.
What is the difference between art and graphic design? ›
Art is the term for a range of human activities that express human creativity and imagination in forms such as painting, music, dance, and literature. Graphic design is a visual communication technique that uses images and typography in order to represent an idea, convey a message, or elicit a response.
What are the similarities and differences between art and design? ›
There are seven significant forms of art, such as painting, sculpture, and painting compared to design.
...
Art and Design – Similarities and Differences.
| Art | Design |
|---|
| Art can serve any kind of purpose, vague purpose, or no purpose at all. | Design always has a purpose. |
| Art is unconstrained. | The design has several constraints, such as client needs or business goals. |
8 more rowsArt and Craft Table of Differences
| Differences Between Art and Craft | Art |
|---|
| Art vs. Craft Definition | A way of expressing emotions in a visual way |
| Created With | Individual artistic merit and talent |
| Purpose | Visual aesthetics |
| Reproduction | Unique and cannot be reproduced |
6 more rows30 Jul 2022
Meaning is ultimately a linguistic extension of the manner in which the work is painted. This relates to a sense of connoisseurship in art, a pre-Modernist idea that suddenly is beginning to appear again, as if something had been missing for decades, and no one seemed to know exactly what was missing.
What is art in simple words? ›
[noncount] : something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings.
How can you define art? ›
Art is generally understood as any activity or product done by people with a communicative or aesthetic purpose—something that expresses an idea, an emotion or, more generally, a world view. It is a component of culture, reflecting economic and social substrates in its design.
What is the difference between product and design? ›
Product development refers to the complete life cycle. This starts from market analysis to goes up to the final product launch. Product design is only a part of the cycle where the design of the product is created.
There are of course infamous product design examples such as the Coca-Cola bottle, the IPod, or the Vespa. Aside from those, one can find many other innovative examples such as the Dyson Pure Cool Link, an air purifier, winner of the 2016 reddote Award.
Is product design considered art? ›
Overall, art is more for the eyes and is usually more thought provoking than product design. Product design is there to serve a function, fix a problem, and have the consumer in mind from start to finish. That being said, product design doesn't need to totally be focused on practicality.
What is art and design all about? ›
An art & design degree studies different visual media like painting, drawing, sculpture, and graphic design. Art and design majors learn basic design principles, color theory, critical thinking, and artistic techniques.
Why is art and design important? ›
Art, craft and design introduces participants to a range of intellectual and practical skills. It enables learners to use and understand the properties of a wide range of tools, machines, materials and systems.
What is the purpose of art and design? ›
to use a range of materials creatively to design and make products. to use drawing, painting and sculpture to develop and share their ideas, experiences and imagination.
What is the difference between design and designing? ›
A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb to design expresses the process of developing a design.
What is the difference between design and creative? ›
Let's start with the most basic way of looking at these two things. CREATIVITY: Problem-solving. The core of methodologies like design thinking and design sprints. DESIGN: Visual expression of the solution valued by almost no companies.
What are the 7 different of art? ›
The seven different art forms are Painting, Sculpture, Literature, Architecture, Theater, Film, and Music.
What is a large difference between two things in art? ›
Contrast – a large difference between two things; for example, warm and cool, yellow and purple, light and shadow. Contrasting values, colors and textures add excitement, emphasis and interest to a work of art.
Why is it called an art? ›
The term “art” is related to the Latin word “ars” meaning, art, skill, or craft. The first known use of the word comes from 13th-century manuscripts. However, the word art and its many variants (artem, eart, etc.) have probably existed since the founding of Rome.
Within this latter sense, the word art may refer to several things: (i) a study of a creative skill, (ii) a process of using the creative skill, (iii) a product of the creative skill, or (iv) the audience's experience with the creative skill.
Why do we need arts? ›
Art helps you process your emotions and understand your surroundings. It allows you to see life from a different perspective and it makes you feel alive. Art has always been an important part of human society since the beginning of time. Art has been used as a tool for cultural exchange, education, and expression.
What is art short essay? ›
It expresses emotions or expression of life. It is one such creation that enables interpretation of any kind. It is a skill that applies to music, painting, poetry, dance and more. Moreover, nature is no less than art. For instance, if nature creates something unique, it is also art.
What are example of arts? ›
Prominent examples of the arts include: visual arts (including architecture, ceramics, drawing, filmmaking, painting, photography, and sculpting), literary arts (including fiction, drama, poetry, and prose), performing arts (including dance, music, and theatre) and.
What defines best art? ›
Good art has a: strong emotional impact on the viewer; long lasting, unforgettable impression.
What is art in your own opinion? ›
The most basic and general meaning of what art is can be told as the creation of someone's creativity and or imagination, which can contain one's visions, expressions and even emotions or feelings.
What is the relationship between design and product? ›
The design options lead to implications for product development. A preferred product design is then selected and tested. A successful market test leads to a detailed product design and a design for manufacture, which leads to the creation of a production prototype. The prototype is then formally approved.
What is the difference between the design of products and design services? ›
Service design is the coordination and combination of people, communication, and material components to create quality service. Product design is the combination of manufacturing capabilities with product and business knowledge to convert ideas into physical and usable objects.
What's the difference between product design and product management? ›
Product managers develop the product vision, understand user needs, and ideate product features to address those needs. In contrast, the product designer empathizes with the user and builds a product experience to solve user problems.
Why is product design important? ›
Product design is crucial because it creates a unique and creative experience for the consumer. As a result, the product's design can attract new customers and create loyal ones. A product's design can go far in creating a memorable experience, which in turn will build strong brand loyalty.
A simple design takes away unnecessary functions, including text, CTA's, images etc. The user should still achieve their goals but not be bombarded by visual and written content. The goal of design is to make it straightforward and engaging without making it dull.
What are the best product designs? ›
19 Most Famous Examples of Influential Product Design
- Anglepoise Lamp. ...
- Automatic Transmission. ...
- Ball Point Pen. ...
- Bendy Straw. ...
- Fitbit. ...
- Fender Stratocaster Electric Guitar. ...
- Hula Hoop. ...
- Coca Cola Bottle.
What exactly is the difference between process art and product art? Process art is open-ended; the focus of the lesson is to use the various mediums and create art for the purpose of expression. Product art is a project that has a set of instructions and requires the end product to replicate a given example.
Can a arts student become a product designer? ›
Product Design Eligibility Criteria
If a student wants to pursue product design course at the graduate level he/she needs to have completed his/her Class 12 from any stream (Arts, Science or Commerce) from a recognised board.
What is product design process? ›
A product design process can be defined as a sequence of steps that are followed by a product team to develop a design solution. It's a series of design tasks that follow a product from start to finish. From idea to the final product ready to be commercially available to the target user.
What is the example of arts and design? ›
chinaware, book illumination), wood-carving (furniture), weaving (tapestry, embroidery), ceramics (sculpture as well as ancient pottery), metalwork (lamps, jewellery), glass art (mosaic art, stained glass), graphic art (printwork, illustration, fabrics, clothes), to name but a few.
What is basic art in design? ›
In Basic Design, students investigate form and the delineation of space within a two-dimensional field, with an emphasis on hand skills and traditional design media. Students develop an understanding of basic design elements and principles and how these are used to formulate clear compositions.
What is the difference between creative arts and art and design? ›
Art can be considered a creative form, whereas design can be considered as a tool. Art is the self-expression of an artist's creative or imaginative ideas or emotions. Design is generally defined as the creation of a designer which is the output of a plan and has been designed to solve a specific problem.
What is the difference between digital art and design? ›
What's The Difference Between Digital Art and Graphic Design? Digital art is a form of art that involves the use of digital tools to produce images and videos. Meanwhile, graphic design is a profession that combines artwork, text, and typography for use in advertising, web design, and other forms of communication.
What is the importance of art and design? ›
Art, craft and design introduces participants to a range of intellectual and practical skills. It enables learners to use and understand the properties of a wide range of tools, machines, materials and systems.
3 Answers. Drawing covers pretty much everything from a sketch on a napkin, to a blueprint. They can all be a drawing. Design is the process of inventing or improving something.
Whats the definition of a design? ›
1 : an arrangement of parts in a structure or a work of art The design of the house suits a large family. 2 : the art or process of planning and creating something His job is Web page design. 3 : a sketch, model, or plan of something made or to be made Architects studied the design for the building.
What is difference between artist and designer? ›
The designer is a pleaser; he/she wants to solve a problem, make things work and look nice. The artist, on the other hand, is often not problem-oriented; he/she just wants to create beautiful things even when there is no meaning (or it is hidden in his mind).
Is art and design the same as design and technology? ›
Art & Design and Design & Technology must remain separate subjects. Despite having 'design' in common, A&D and D&T are very different, and it is essential that we maintain the distinction in schools, says Andy Mitchell…
What is the difference between art and creativity? ›
In short: art is an original creation with the intention of sparking an emotion or response in the viewer, listener, etc. Conversely, creativity and creative ability is defined as the skill of pooling together different elements to find a solution to a problem.
What do you mean by arts and creative? ›
The Creative Arts domain describes the variety of artistic activities that allow children to use their imaginations, creativity, and express ideas in a variety of mediums. Included in this domain are indicators for dance, drama and theatre arts, music, and visual arts.
What is the relationship between creativity and design? ›
Creativity isn't a one time task, but rather a process that works parallel with the design process. It requires one to bring novel ideas and concepts to the table. It is seen as a key element in innovation because it can spark new ideas and fresh perspectives.
What is good design in art? ›
What exactly are the principles of good design? Simply put, they are the tools every artist uses to create an effective composition. These tools are balance, contrast, emphasis, movement, proportion, repetition, simplicity, space, and unity.
What is digital art and design major? ›
Digital arts students use computers to create art. They work in digital photography, animation, electronic sound and music, graphic design, and other digital or interactive media.
What is the difference between print design and digital design? ›
Although the majority of print design work is created using digital software, digital design refers to design which is created solely for digital purposes and devices. If you can see and interact with a design on a screen—whether it be on a phone, desktop or digital billboard—this is a form of digital design.
In contemporary art, the term digital art is used primarily to describe visual art that is not just made with digital tools, but that is highly computational and explicitly engages with digital technologies.
