The University of Arizona School of Art | Visual Communications | Spring 2005

Design is not a stepchild of fine arts anymore. Until recently, talking about design was talking about an inferior form of art. Now, there is free exchange of ideas between fine arts and design. Graphic design, as it is discovering new possibilities, is being now often an inspirative source for these “high” arts. Graphic design and typography are pushed by growing market economies that guarantee further development of new technologies, greatly needed in design. In the world of today, graphic design found itself in an unprecedented situation, and is rapidly gaining a new position in the society. In the past graphic design was condemned to be only a reflective form of art. It has always been affected by fashion, and because designers are aware of that, the majority of works are aimed to exist only for a limited time. As a style, graphic design will continue to rest to society and changes in the culture. It also has the potential to create visual symbols and spread them amongst the people. This function of art has been always reserved for the fine arts only. Design has at least the same influential role on people as other forms of arts. What makes design so different from the other forms of art? Are works of graphic designers less valuable just because they have essentially a commercial function? Or is it the ethical and social responsibility of a designer that creates a gap between those two forms of art? I see the greatest difference between design and fine arts in their attitude toward a copy. While in fine arts a copy means something that degrades an artwork; a copy in design is the final work. A piece of computer graphic exists only as a copy; there is no original at all. The unlimited possibility of reproduction of a piece of graphic design seems to be a problem for art curators.

In the digital world, the distinction between a copy and an original becomes meaningless. Computer art might eventually fog the boundaries between the different models of art. Yet, people are still biased toward a notion of “hand-made” and “artist’s hands”, and we will hardly see pieces of graphic design being sold at auctions.