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Dear Ben, Thank you for your message. You wrote: "Design and Art are related disciplines and always have been." The design professions cover a large conceptual territory. Only 7% or so of Design disciplines are directly related to Art as in the UK's 'Art and Design' group. Design is connected to many other fields. There are historical reasons (as Eduardo points out) why some aspects of Design have had a long link with Art. Most other Design fields however have only tenuous links with Art. My previous email was to suggest that there are some advantages in clear simple thinking and noticing that there are differences between how designers and artists use many skills such as those you listed (sketching, modeling, aesthetic acuity, and conceptual thinking). I'm suggesting if you do this, you will start to see problems for designers when you interpret that designers do everything the same way as artists. I'm suggesting this shows up most clearly when you look carefully (putting aside the habits of overprivileging Art) in the lack of sound design theory, research methods, and clarity about design activity. It's a useful art skill to blur things together and make random associations. Clearly viewing a situation requires a different skill - that of noticing the *differences* between the activities of designers and artists. A similar approach shows the significant differences between Physics and Maths. Best regards, Terry -----Original Message----- From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Benjamin Pratt Sent: Wednesday, 9 June 2010 11:43 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Design - the problem of Art Terrence: Design and Art are related disciplines and always have been. They tend to use similar abilities--such as sketching, modeling, aesthetic acuity, and conceptual thinking. There is also overlap. For example, if an artist is asked to create a piece of public sculpture with some very specific constraints--scale, budget, even content, the artist is doing a design project? If a designer creates a one-of a-kind piece of furniture to communicate a unique philosophy or perspective is this not an "Art" project? I would say that the relationship between Design and Art is analogous to the relationship between Physics and Math. -Ben -- Benjamin G. Pratt Professor, Design The University of Wisconsin-Stout