Which word is more unspecified than “design”? You often hear, this person is a “designer”, this thing is well designed, “do you like design furnitures?”... But what is the true meaning of “design” in French? And how can we distinguish between “design” and art? Where is the difference?
What about the etymology of “design”? “Design” is an Anglo-Saxon word whose etymology comes from the French words “dessein” (which means project, intention) and “dessin” (which means drawing, picture). These two identical words took on different meanings beginning in the XVIII. Century, as the act of drawing would have been separated from the project.
The meaning of “design” varies with the period and the culture. So there is no one definition. For the Anglo-Saxons “design” is rather a project, a construct, an idea. In French it is rather a search for harmony between the shape and the function of the object. For the functionalists it is a process to give to objects the right shape according to their functionality. But now this meaning has gotten lost and is often confused with stylization to embellish objects in order to attract consumers. A designer is different from an artisan because he is not a specialist of a particular material (wood, metal, plastic…). He is also different from a technician because he is not skilled in one particular technique and he is not an engineer because he crosses all fields of knowledge.
So, what is the relationship between art and design?
The concept of “design” originated in the half of the 19th Century. The industry was in great expansion and objects started to be made in mass. Individuality slipped into the background. In 1888 John Ruskin (picture 2) and William Morris (writer, painter, decorator) founded the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society (picture 3). They wanted to create new shapes in relation to the function of the objects and they lauded a return to Nature and Middle Age. They wanted to bring together conceptualizers and consumers because they had immediately understood that industry is inhuman. They wanted to defend the beauty of artisanal work and denounce mediocrity.
Design was described, for a long time, as a “manual art”. It was not really considered as art because it was subjugated to something : furniture, space, industry, to a function…
The design is seen at service of a technical function, while art has an intellectual function. So you can speak of web design or design for furnitures. But you will not speak of design for a painting!
Written by Romane
3 comments
Emma
All our life is design! Best Regards
3 months ago
Rémy C
So, I can say : I am design (I’m just a technical function) and my MacBook is design. :)
3 months ago
semi
This is a really interesting post. Where did you get your sources on the separation of dessin and dessein in the C18th? I’m looking for references on the subject.
16 days ago
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