now

Kate and I had an interesting conversation yesterday at Rock Bottom Brewery about art and design and whether they stand at opposite ends of an imaginary spectrum or not.

Eventually we put “engineering” and “art” on opposite ends of a spectrum and decided design falls somewhere in the middle. Going towards the art end on that spectrum, once we are past design, things get really hard for me to grasp and apparently for Kate same is true going in the opposite direction.

I promised I would post definitions (from Webster Dictionary) of both on my blog so here they are:

ART: the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects

DESIGN: the arrangement of elements or details in a product or work of art

I don’t think I agree with either of these definitions but I am a lot more likely to challenge the definition of design than the definition of art.