Culture and Art

"Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future." ~ Robert L. Peters

As artists, art educators, marketing developers, ad designers, business owners, ect. design has the potential to be a great tool or a horrible failure.  When an art department works effectively and inter-connectedly with marketing, ad design, and businesses, a culture may be created around a product or concept ('product') which in turn creates a value.  Value at the design level is unable to be measured, only predicted for the future.

Visual communication in a society bombarded daily by the Internet, magazines, billboards, TV, ect. is either enticing or dissuading to/by the audience by the design of the product or concept.  Design must have meaning and recognizable attributes to the 'product' so that there will be a shift in culture, which is needed for longevity.

Think about Apple, Barbie, Disney, Coke, etc. for example.  All of these companies and more have utilized artists across many genre to work with business people in a symbiotic manner to create cultures which have endured over time when others have fallen flat.  Design, lack of valuing art by business or vis versa, and a poor design are some reasons the 'product' may have failed.

The primary point being, as art educators, artists, and business people always keep in your mind that in a visual culture which has few escapes (cell phones, iPads, computers, billboards, magazines, social networking, Internet, TV, etc.) it is more important than ever to work together, each with our unique set of skills to establish the design which will create the desired culture.

It should be noted that on occasion these design cultures happen by accident, however more often than not it is with painstaking work and time.