Designers work with clients. Clients work with designers. It’s a symbiotic relationship which can be productive, surprising, infuriating, satisfying, testing… but always interesting. If we’re honest, life without clients would be a lot easier – there would be no need for compromise, no need to adhere to deadlines and the clichéd request to ‘make the logo bigger’ wouldn’t exist. These constraints and parameters are, however, the things that differentiate what we do from other creative disciplines and should be embraced. Michael Bierut knows this only too well and sums it up neatly with an all too easily forgotten point.
“Clients are the difference between design and art.”
Bierut is a former Vice President at Vignelli Associates, currently a partner at Pentagram, and one of the most esteemed graphic designers working today. His list of achievements is endless; he has worked with the biggest clients on some of the most high profile projects in the world, has won every major design award going and his work is in the permanent collections of galleries and museums worldwide. He is also an AIGA medal holder, which is the highest honour in the field of design and, needless to say, a pretty big deal.
In summary, he knows what he’s talking about.
Thanks for reading,
Tom and Phil
“Clients are the difference between design and art.”
This ignores a great deal of art history, during which most art was, in fact, produced specifically for and at the request of clients. It also makes it sound like it’s the clients who prevent designers from achieving art. When, actually, it’s probably our misplaced ideal that art is pure creativity, executed in some sort of holy, commerce-free vacuum, that prevents us from imagining that our creative work is art.
It’s sometimes hard to get ones head around the art / design thing as there so many crossovers. If a designer or illustrator with a vivid style is commissioned to create work in their style to serve a commercial purpose, which one is it? I’d say design, but they then continue to repurpose that style for different clients in different industries, then is this not the opposite of form following function? I think what Michael is getting at, is that art, in it’s purest form today seems to represent boundless unfettered creative curiosity, lacking a necessity for defined meaning. Whereas design, in it’s purest form, serves a definite and (usually commercial) purpose, which is normally constrained by the budget and demands of clients. Perhaps doodling would have been a more accurate word to use, but the sentiment is correct. Design without the constraints of a client’s demands, budget, function and purpose becomes something simply stylistic, i.e., not really design at all.