Art Or Design; Why Not Both?

Editor’s Note
Most of us, artists and designers included, and I will put myself in that group too, tend to treat art and design as two different instincts. One is expression, the other is problem solving, and we rarely ask why that split exists in the first place.

My student’s essay below made me question it. She points to something as simple as her favorite comics and manga, where the world the characters live in matters just as much as the characters themselves. Gotham without Batman does not really work, but Batman without Gotham does not either she correctly states.

Written By: Esperenz Nazareth @esperenz.nazareth

If someone told me four years ago that I would be twenty-two years old, a recent OCAD graduate, and living in an apartment filled to the brim with art I would have laughed in disbelief. I often struggle to take a step back and consider the present when there is so much I still want to do.

My time at OCAD made me think frequently about the intersection of art and design and how much I could blur the threshold between both.

Art has always been the one consistent in my life. Throughout elementary school I was always doodling during my free time. In 2019 I got my first job which further exposed me to anime and manga.

The consistency of those works in spite of the variety of styles, genres and stories that were being told through the same medium mademe realize that no matter where I ended up I would not stop drawing.

So why did I choose to study design if I have so much love for art?

One thing I promised to myself is that I would always draw as long as I enjoyed doing so.

In my eyes I already knew how to draw people and I could form stories and narratives through them. What I struggled to do was imagine and consider the world in which they inhabit and how said worlds can shape stories.

I couldn’t help but think: what better way to explore the world than through design? In my favourite comics and manga the setting and the worlds these stories took place in were equally as important as the characters themselves.

There is no Gotham without Batman, but the reverse is true as well.

Did your design always incorporate your art?

It was not until my third year of university where I was encouraged to embrace my love for art and illustration.

I eventually merged my passion within my design practice. During my first and second years I often found myself dreading to do any design work whatsoever, it was challenging to have so much of my time consumed by work that seemed to not retain satisfactory results according to my professors.

It was frustrating to get criticism from professors without any feedback on how I could improve my work and make better design decisions.

For a while it even made me hesitant to learn because it seemed as if I made the wrong choice by choosing to study design.

It wasn’t until third year that I realized that the harshness of those first two years of school helped me with how I received critique and how I could tastefully apply art into the very bones of all my design work.

How do comics and manga play into your design practice?

My design process often begins as something that is heavily speculative.

I enjoy exploring my work by starting with conceptual sketches, situations and depictions of how people would exist in a potential project rather than considering forms first.

I imagine all my projects through small comics and narratives and I often use my own artbooks and manga as references when presenting and designing my work as shown within my thesis project “Reclamare.”

My project was aimed to combat gentrification within the Moss Park community by redesigning the proposed community centre with a food security centre. It took inspiration from films like Princess Mononoke and I spent a fair amount of time researching how artists and designers work together in tandem to bring fictional worlds into the built environment and vice-versa.

This collaboration between the artist and designer often bore the fruit of many Studio Ghibli films as Hayao Miyazaki worked closely with architect Teronobu Fujimori to create his fantastical worlds. My assumptions of having to push art away to make space for design was disproven by the very people and works I admired and looked up to.

I came to realize how essential environments are to any story.

Design helped me strengthen the areas of my illustrative work that were weak. It also aided with forming perspectives and approaching my design through a lens that could read as a story.

I tend to present my work by mixing both traditional and digital mediums with the goal for entire projects to be read as a cohesive set. I find by touching up floor plans with watercolour and using similar palettes in hand drawn perspectives make projects read as a whole.

It also makes a process I personally used to dread as something enjoyable and exploratory.

Is all this work worth it with the introduction of artificial intelligence?

If there is one thing I am good at, it is being stubborn.

I refuse to use or incorporate any form of artificial intelligence into my design work because I consider it to oppose the very thing that my degree was made for.

While other people may disagree, the reason I chose to study environmental design was to not only better my work and understanding of how environments form people’s lived experiences but to also do so in a way that is sustainable.

Artificial intelligence not only affects our natural resources but it also affects critical thinking and human expression.

I ask you, how is a machine supposed to understand a fraction of what a human being’s existence entails? How is it supposed to comprehend that environments reflect and shape our lives?

The process is where most of my joy lies. It is where experiments and discoveries take place and though it is not always enjoyable, I take pride in claiming that my work is 100% my own.

The lines between art and design intersect, at least in my own practice.

I think both are strengthened by the other and can be refined to benefit one another. Being able to understand how the built environment can work speculatively and be present in media I love encourages me when pitching and refining my portfolio to begin my creative career.

Currently, I am working on a comic which I plan to pitch to a variety of editors and submit to competitions. Though I feel uncertain at times of my future, I have come to learn that by not reaching out to people and by not putting myself out into industries I want to work in, I am reducing my own chances to zero.

A machine cannot take over the human spirit unless you let it. I encourage you to stay stubborn, curious and to pursue something in passion in spite of the unknown.

Biography: My name is Esperenz Nazareth and I am a recent OCAD Environmental Design Graduate. I enjoy drawing more than anything and I am currently working on a comic based on an all-girls visual kei band. In my free time I enjoy reading, thrifting, and adding to my extensive collection of art books. If you are interested in keeping up with my work please feel free tofollow me on instagram (@esperenz.nazareth)