Terry, if you think design is about science, technology and rationality
and that is all, then say so. There is no point in such a tirade. You
are talking to the wrong people in the wrong way, and potentially making
enemies of those who need to be friends. You cannot dismiss those design
fields that deal, as a matter of necessity, with the non-rational as
well as the rational, which, looking at your list of issues, is what you
appear to be doing. I agree that design is not art, but there is art in
design, as there is, by definition, in all intelligent, skilful
activites.

It is more interesting to think of design as a cultural practice; its
relationships to art, language, history, hermeneutics, etc. are at least
as important, in practical as well as theoretical terms, as those with
science, technology and rationality. Both engineering and jewelery,
flight plan to Mars and Expo 2015, please. Design from hard to soft,
maybe there is no single account to be had and that is a good thing. Art
is not the problem, reductionist thinking is.

Geoff Matthews
Lincoln

-----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 Terence Love
Sent: 09 June 2010 03:10
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Design - the problem of Art

A serious and unacknowledged problem in the development of the field
Design has been the connection of some Design fields with Art.

Design is fundamentally different from Art.

That many Design courses have been hosted within Art Schools has led to
Art hegemonically imposing its practices and ways of thinking on Design
education. 

This 'forcing of Design into Art's way of thinking'  has significantly
held back the development of the Design field, its theories, research
methods, growth of knowledge, and development of doctoral research in
Design.

The essence of Design is to create instructions for making or doing
something. Design activity always has a *purpose*. 

This is one of the things that distinguish Design from Art.

There are seven core issues in Design:

1.	How to accurately predict the behaviour of a designed outcome in
part and whole
2.	Explicit and verifiable theories about ways to identify parts of
a
solution that contribute to a design filling its purpose
3.	Explicit and verifiable theories about ways to chose between
different partial solutions
4.	Explicit and verifiable theories for analysis and justification
of
why particular choices were made
5.	Explicit and verifiable theories that forecast the behaviour of
the
combination of parts of a design in an integrated whole
6.	Verifiable theories about how to explicitly evaluate how parts
or
the whole of a design contribute to fulfill the purpose of the design.
7.	Explicit and verifiable theories about reviewing how th3
outcomes of
a design did or did not fulfill its purpose and explain why in ways that
can be used to modify other theories.

Addressing these issues is central to the activity of Design becoming a
professional practice. They are not addressed where Design is controlled
by the culture and concepts of Art.

While they remain unaddressed, designers remain without the necessary
professional theories and practices. From a critical perspective, this
gives a picture of designers as unprofessional guessers and 'chancers'
hoping to get people to pay them money for their guesses and with the
hope that no claim will be made against them when things go wrong.

If acting as professionals, designers would be expected to  be able to
explain and justify how and why their designs will behave and will
result in the intended outcomes. This implies that a core skill of
professional designer is to be able to evaluate how well designs
fulfilled the intended outcomes and explain why they achieved their
outcomes.

In areas of Design associated with Art, these issues remain unaddressed
because of Design being taught as if it were Art. 

Practically, problems are evidenced in, for example, in the strange
assumption that teaching  Art information in Design  converts them into
'design theories' (Gestalt, colour combinations etc come to mind. These
are simply background practical information and not theory -  in the
same way that screw sizes are not engineering theory). Another strange
practice,  is the teaching of a simplified version of Shannon's
Communication hypothesis as if it were a design theory. If it were a
*real*design theory, one could sensibly ask how many bits of information
are being transferred by one design of graphic communicate relative to
another graphic. One could ask 'What is the difference in decibels of
the relative noise between them?'
Instead, Shannon's theory  is used trivially in a cargo-cult way - a bit
like using E=mc^2 and suggesting that the energy in an image has been
increased because more mass of paint has been used.

It is reasonable to ask which of two designs is better. 

It is reasonable to expect a design field to have:

*	theories that accurately predict the behaviour of outcomes of a
design
*	testable theories that accurately predict how particular design
elements influence outcomes
*	theories and methods for accurately evaluating whether a design
fulfilled its purposes

These theory foundations are essential to Design becoming a discipline
and a professional practice rather than an amateur guessing game. 

None of the theories essential to Design are however  needed in Art and
most Art 'theory' is not needed in Design.  The problem then becomes how
to enable Design to develop as a discipline by removing and  reduce the
influence of Art.

Four questions:

*	Are designers and design researchers indoctrinated with the
wrong
skill set and concepts due to unhelpful influences by those in Art?
*	Are we prepared to critically review the way that Design has
been
unhelpfully influenced by Art?
*	What would Design look like if all Art influenced were removed
from
it?
*	Should Design as a matter of course be taught separately from
Art?
(In the way that one would expect say Spanish to be taught separately
from Physics).

 

It appears this issue is becoming obvious in different countries and I
believe Design Forum will soon start a debate on it.

 

Best wishes,
Terry
____________________

Dr. Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM
School of Design and Art
Director Design-focused Research Group, Design Out Crime Research Group
Researcher, Digital Ecosystems and Business Intelligence Institute
Associate,  Planning and Transport Research Centre Curtin University, PO
Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845
Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask] Member
of(Internaitonal  Scientific Council, UNIDCOM/ IADE, Lisbon, Portugal
Honorary Fellow, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise
Development Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
____________________

 

 
 
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