Oct 25

Oct 25 Design Has To Work, Art Does Not

“Design has to work, Art does not.”
– Donald Judd.

I recently heard this quote, and it took me a while to understand what it meant.
It sums up the difference between the work of a business and the work of an artist.
Design has a job to do, usually by serving a client or solving a problem.
That means there are targets, a sense of passing or failing, various perspectives to consider.
Art, on the other hand, does not need to please everyone or be functional.

Here’s the difference – the way you make money from design is quite different to how you make money from art.
With design, you make money from contracts and sales, where you agree to prices ahead of time and create a shared set of metrics and expectations.
With art, you might make money or you might not, and the market price might not be what you initially expected (for better or for worse).
Winning a large contract and launching an NFT are both lucrative, but very different in their creation and expectations.
There are no stereotypes of starving designers, but nobody has ever heard of whoever built the guide app for the Sistine Chapel.

*Niels Fabæk/Kunsten Museum of Modern Art*

Take the recent example from Jens Haanings in Denmark:
The artist borrowed AU$116,000 of cash to make a new versions of his artworks out of banknotes, but then send two blank canvases back to the gallery entitled “Take the Money and Run”.
Haanings calls it a commentary on the situation facing artists and how they are valued.
Is it art?
I think it is.
Is it what he was contracted to do?
No, and the gallery are chasing him up to return the cash by January 2022.

Here’s where it comes up in business:
If you’re starting a company in a field where you previously made art (e.g. monetising a hobby), there will be some clunky adjustments.
Deadlines, customers, contracts, prices, negotiations, invoices, doing it when you don’t feel like it.
That’s because you’re now wearing two hats – the artist and the designer.
You want a plan for when and how you’ll wear each hat, or bring in another person to handle the administrative and customer facing sides.

It also comes up with your Cash Cows, Small Margins and Loss Leaders.
You have the option of splitting your work into these three buckets, each with their own parameters.
For example, you might choose to do design work as a Cash Cow, then make art as a Loss Leader.
This very website is a neat example, it’s a loss leader in that it helps me distill content out of my work, which I can then use in my higher ticket work.
That higher ticket work comes with complications, particularly when we need to meet odd client requirements.
Here I can do whatever I like, nobody looking over my shoulder or telling me what to do.
The balance is fantastic – a compromise that’s not actually a compromise, it’s a lot of things rather than a watered-down creative project.

You can have lots of both, but you’ll need a plan.
Design work brings in resources and some helpful structure.
Art brings liberation, expression, inspiration and a chance to change how you see yourself.
I know that sounds pretentious but look at any of the drones working in big standardised companies and tell me if they find any liberation, expression and inspiration in creating slides and presentations that won’t be appreciated.

A great example is Ryan Gosling’s character in La La Land, a jazz musician who plays in an ‘80s synth cover band at parties to make money.
Emma Stone requests “I Ran” by Flock of Seagulls out of spite, knowing it will annoy him.
Later he pulls her aside:
“Ok, I was an asshole, I can admit that, but requesting ‘I Ran’ from a serious musician is just, it’s too far.”
If you’re going to have two ways of working, you need a way of rationalising each of them.

This distinction also affects your hiring – are you recruiting an artist or a designer?
Artists are creative but often unpredictable, which is challenging for Gantt charts and weekly meetings.
Designers are diligent and open minded, but not necessarily revolutionary in their thinking, nor are they personally invested in the work.
From my own observations, an artist adds spice and intensity to a project, but might not be the person to manage it.
I’d add them in as a specialist, who can then work with other design-focused roles who keep things running as smoothly as they realistically can.

You can be a designer, you can be an artist, and you can be both.
But you’ll need to get good at switching modes and mindsets, because evaluating one field by the other one’s scorecard is a recipe for disenchantment.