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Artists by Another Name
Published last year, at the end of January under Design
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Designers, photographers, programmers, authors, architects—we’re all artists. Yet many of us, myself included, rarely create art pour l’art—art for art’s sake. We create on behalf of others, intermixing our self-expression with the motivations of a client, employer, or patron. Jacques Barzun wrote “Self-expression is only real after the means to it have been acquired”†. As craftsmen we possess that means, yet too often tap this resource on behalf of others rather than for ourselves.
Art is important for a designer. It allows for experimentation, inspiration, and perhaps a shot at immortality. I’ve collected a few examples of some great modern and 20th century self-expression produced by commercial designers. This year I plan to embark on my own art projects and hope you will too…
The Maps, Paula Scher
Paula Scher is one of the design greats. She’s branded Citibank and Tiffany & Co, teaches at The School of Visual Arts in New York, and is a principle at Pentagram.
As a side-project at her country home, she hand-painted these amazingly detailed typographic maps of the world. Type flows together ocean currents, cities, streets, and statistics to beautifully illustrate the the world. If you live in New York, the Maya Stendhal Gallery is displaying some of her recent work until the 26th.
An Interval of Design Freedom, Ladislav Sutnar
Ladislav Sutnar was a master of rationalized design. His work was meticulously justified and thought-out, as evidenced by his extensive design sketches.
Sutnar also produced abstract artwork, often as a design exercise. His art explores shape, color, and texture, and provided inspiration for his design work. He showcases a few of these explorations in his book Visual Design in Action.
NeXT, IBM identities, Paul Rand
The NeXT and IBM identities created by Rand are certainly pieces of commercial design—not art pour l’art. Rand, one of the most influential designers of the 20th century, created these marks for commercial goals, not self-expression. Yet Rand’s work has an amazingly playful and expressive quality to it. His solutions are so well thought-out that it seems like he stepped into the client’s collective mind and expressed the qualities they embodied. And he illustrated his client’s values through art and posters created with those marks. It’s not art pour l’art, but it certainly feels just as genuine.
NeXT poster from Design, Form, and Chaos by Paul Rand
† Jacques Barzun, “The Centrality of Reading”, Begin Here (via Paul Rand)
Shout into the Forest
I liked the post so I thought I would leave a comment.
On a more serious note, I think it’s interesting what Ernest Becker says about artists and art in The Denial of Death:
“the work of art is the artist’s attempt to justify his heroism objectively, in the concrete creation”
I like Paula Scher’s maps just as much as the IBM identity. Thanks for another interesting post — I’m looking forward curiously to what you’ll come up this year!
Who knows?
Your embarking on art creation may lead you to collaborate on some projects … as you mentioned many creative professions do collaborate.
Here in my village of Sausalito we have
http://www.awb.iohome.net/ for example… not “just” the commercial side (Federated Media/ J. Battelle)
- Kare
Kare - there is a misspelled word on your website. . . “view varios topics relevant. . .” - I’m thinking “varios” should be spelled “various”?
As a designer, this phenomenon has always seemed obvious to me, but I’ve never had it articulated so succinctly before. It’s comforting to know there are others grappling with this oddity, and that they are planning to overcome it.