<commit_before>---
title: Yet another article about design vs. art
date: 2015-07-22 00:00:00 Z
layout: post
---

Test Update

![Image of Paints and Art Tools](/assets/img/posts/designart.jpg){:class="post-image"}

This is my thinkpiece on the difference between design and art. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of think pieces out there about what is design, and what is art, and how they overlap (or don’t). Can art exist without design? Can design exist without art? Is graphic design art or is it design? Does art have a role in UX design?

The world hardly needs another article on this topic, but I feel like if I’m going to have a blog about design, I should make it clear what my stance is here.

First up: Design.

Design is the reduction of friction
-----------------------------------

This is another way of saying that design is about removing all the things that make something not work as well as it could. In user experience design this means making something easy to use by removing everything that makes it difficult to use. There are millions of articles out there about how this works, but design isn’t just about usability. There are other kinds of friction that can be eliminated with creative design — including literal friction.

I recently bought a Nissan LEAF electric car. As you can see in the picture below, it has a couple of really funky looking raised headlights.

![Nissan Leaf](/assets/img/content/nissanleaf.png){:class="content-image"}

Those funky headlights aren’t purely stylistic. They’re designed to reduce drag over the side mirrors. Both mileage and safety are important to car manufacturers. Since side mirrors can’t be eliminated or made perfectly aerodynamic, a creative designer found a way to use a completely different car part to mitigate one negative impact of their presence.

Design can also be used to reduce friction in marketing. In marketing, friction is anything that prevents a user from selecting your product over a competitor’s. A marketer’s goal is to make the decision to use their product as close to a “no-brainer” as possible.

If I’m considering two different restaurants and one offers online reservations and one doesn’t, I’m almost always going to choose the one with online reservations. This may not truly be “in my best interest” (maybe the food at the other place is better), but I absolutely hate feeling like an idiot when I call for a reservation just to find out they’re booked for weeks. That’s friction a restaurant needs to remove if they want to do business with me.

What about Graphic Design? Is Graphic Design… design? Or is it art? That’s where the art vs. design debate tends to get pretty heated. My take is that it’s a little bit of both, but it’s mostly art. So let’s define art:

Art is the use of craft to tell a story
---------------------------------------
<commit_msg>Updated Yet Another Post About Design Vs Art<commit_after>---
title: Yet another article about design vs. art
date: 2015-07-22 00:00:00 Z
layout: post
---

Test Update

![Image of Paints and Art Tools](/uploads/designart.jpg){:class="post-image"}

This is my thinkpiece on the difference between design and art. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of think pieces out there about what is design, and what is art, and how they overlap (or don’t). Can art exist without design? Can design exist without art? Is graphic design art or is it design? Does art have a role in UX design?

The world hardly needs another article on this topic, but I feel like if I’m going to have a blog about design, I should make it clear what my stance is here.

First up: Design.

Design is the reduction of friction
-----------------------------------

This is another way of saying that design is about removing all the things that make something not work as well as it could. In user experience design this means making something easy to use by removing everything that makes it difficult to use. There are millions of articles out there about how this works, but design isn’t just about usability. There are other kinds of friction that can be eliminated with creative design — including literal friction.

I recently bought a Nissan LEAF electric car. As you can see in the picture below, it has a couple of really funky looking raised headlights.

![Nissan Leaf](/assets/img/content/nissanleaf.png){:class="content-image"}

Those funky headlights aren’t purely stylistic. They’re designed to reduce drag over the side mirrors. Both mileage and safety are important to car manufacturers. Since side mirrors can’t be eliminated or made perfectly aerodynamic, a creative designer found a way to use a completely different car part to mitigate one negative impact of their presence.

Design can also be used to reduce friction in marketing. In marketing, friction is anything that prevents a user from selecting your product over a competitor’s. A marketer’s goal is to make the decision to use their product as close to a “no-brainer” as possible.

If I’m considering two different restaurants and one offers online reservations and one doesn’t, I’m almost always going to choose the one with online reservations. This may not truly be “in my best interest” (maybe the food at the other place is better), but I absolutely hate feeling like an idiot when I call for a reservation just to find out they’re booked for weeks. That’s friction a restaurant needs to remove if they want to do business with me.

What about Graphic Design? Is Graphic Design… design? Or is it art? That’s where the art vs. design debate tends to get pretty heated. My take is that it’s a little bit of both, but it’s mostly art. So let’s define art:

Art is the use of craft to tell a story
---------------------------------------

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