The life of design | Bangkok Post: Arts & Culture

ARTINTERVIEW

What is the difference between art and design? Well, surely there are many differences. Design serves a practical function in a way that art doesn't, or cannot. The process of creating design is comparable to art but design typically serves a client and art is typically an individual, or personal, pursuit. Moreover, design often requires a number of different skills and therefore can be perceived as a collaborative to a degree that visual art isn't. Finally, art doesn't look like design unless it is saying something about design, which means its art anyway.

A David Bowie album cover (2002) by Jonathan Barnbrook.

However, the question of these pervasive, if not normative, distinctions came to mind at a recent lecture by famed British designer Jonathan Barnbrook in Bangkok. Organised by the International Programme in Communication Design at Chulalongkorn University and titled "What You Want Is Not What You Need", Barnbrook's survey of his innovative, often political, and usually very memorable, designs was the culmination of a 4-day official visit to the capital.