ArchiCulture Cafe number EIGHT

This week, Raghavendra Guddur Reddy gave a talk on visual design, outlining ten commandments to consider. The first commandment (Thou shalt design - NOT create art) was very very interesting to me as I have studied both Art and Design. The comparison between the intent of design and art suggested that the designer works for the masses and the artist works for themselves. I found this to be pretty accurate - the process of art-making could be a similar one to designing something, but, of course, the end result differs in definition and intent. Design has always held for me a base point of informing an audience. The design of something puts across a message, whether it be for the education of an audience or the influence of a visitor to a space. An artwork could contribute to an individual's experience in these ways as well but often artworks are not created with the sole purpose of informing at heart. I also found from the descriptions offered of both design and art that design was illustrated as a thing intrinsically possessing an amount of order and progression, while art could have both these things but is usually not defined as possessing these things. Previous to this lecture I hadn't considered this difference between the two entities.
In addition to finding these things, I also found that the artwork was presented here as a 'bad' thing. While in informing (and/or designing) it would probably be best to stick to the ideals of design, I tend to think it probably wouldn't harm anyone to add elements of art to a design proposal - but only where it adheres to the design commandments of course.
The rest of the lecture I found highly useful and I intend to keep a copy to refer to in future when creating design presentations. Even though the ideas and instructions presented are usually considered in design presentation, I found it helpful for them to be layed out in an order (designed ?) and articulated in such a way as to be easily accessible by all.