JEFFREY ZELDMAN

It's art.

Kidding of course.

It depends. There are so many *kinds* of "communicating."

Is once-upon-a-forest.com communicating? Yes.

Is it communicating standard stuff like "About Us ... Our Services ... Contact the Webmaster?" No. Is it art? Definitely.

Does that mean cryptic communication is always art? Hell, no. Some design WANTS to communicate basic things clearly but fails. That is bad design. Sometimes good design falls down in places. Sapient is a zillion dollar web agency, and say what you will about the heartlessness of megacorporate web design shops, this one is not staffed by hacks, and the front page of its corporate site communicates very well. Except for those cryptic icons on the right hand side. They look good. The rollover effect is easy on the eyes. But unless you recognize the Adobe icon at the bottom, and extrapolate from that, you have no idea what those little icons mean. (They mean: selected client case studies. Who knew?)

So there's a site that communicates well overall, and has been put together by maybe a dozen highly skilled professionals, and in one key area it fails to communicate. That ain't art, that's a failure to communicate. But a failure that occurs in an otherwise highly communicative environment.

Many somewhat cryptic sites are art, or my name's not whatever my name is. Photomontage communicates richly and obscurely. Just like art! And it *is* art. Supermodified communicates on a sophisticated level. If you're familiar with web conventions and have a love of unique interfaces, you'll get it. If it's your first day with your new AOL account, you won't. Does that make it bad design? No. It makes it highly targeted design that selects a sophisticated audience. Is it art? It is beautiful and incredibly creative, but I think it is high level design, rather than art. What's the difference?

I ain't no professor, but I'd say the difference has to do with intention and execution. Intention, because Supermodified wants to wow you, wants to guide you to certain key locations, and wants you to take away certain messages (such as: that guy Amon Tobin is a great composer). Design does that. It conveys specific messages to targeted viewers.

Art does something else. Sure, Picasso's Guernica conveys a message too - "war is hell" - but usually art's messages cannot be boiled down into sentences like that, and the messages of design can be. (Also, if it's messy, it's probably art. If it's super-clean, it's probably design.)

Your question could lead to months of interesting speculation about the differences between art and design. I hate generalizatons, and I think your question really must be answered case by case. But generally, when a when a site is clearly set up to do something (sell books, provide information about dog ownership, share personal narratives), if the visitor gets lost or confused, then the design fails.

There are also plenty of designs that succeed in spite of being ugly as hell. That's another kind of bad design, but that's another question for another day.

KALLE EVERLAND

I think design always communicate in some way, even the design that is more like art, they all communicate in some way, maybe its intended to give you some kind of feeling or mood.

So even if the design itself doesnt have any informative content it still communicates. If there would be any design that doesnt, it wouldnt be design any more, I dont know what it would be, junk most likely, but definately not design or webart. And what would that be?

Even a blank screen communicates in some way, I mean a white screen gives you some kind fo emotion, doesnt it?

Communication is so much more then a users guide on how to use frontpage express, the most valuable communication is the one who makes you think twice or punches you in the chest with the force of a sledgehammer.

Communication with purpose and soul.

And it doesnt need to be some badass mindblowing supergraphics to communicate, sometimes less is more. But usually more is better.

Art without communication would be a total waste of space, not even worth looking at, literally.

BRENT GUSTAFSON

Design is a tricky word, simply because it has so many meanings, depending on which form is used (noun or verb) and in what context it's used in.

Since we're mainly discussing web design here, that narrows it down, however I think a lot of people have their own personal definitions of what is design or what is art, etc.

With that said, most people believe that design is all about communication. I tend to be one of those that agrees with that. But I don't think communication is just plopping text in a site and telling the user what you mean. There are a lot of ways to communicate, with color, layout, imagery, etc. Ways that are more subtle, ways that give the user a "feeling" without having to tell them how to feel.

Anyone who works as a designer for a living knows the virtues of knowing your audience and designing to communicate best to those people. In this instance if your design doesn't communicate to who your target market is, it's probably an unsuccessful design. Obviously, if a site like Bad Boy Online were made to sell pace makers to 80 year old people, it probably wouldn't communicate as effectively as something more trimmed down, minimal, with straight forward navigation, and the font size turned up a bit.

In the corporate web design sense, I think communication is the essential part of design. Ignoring it for the sake of pomp and circumstance (especially when it's not needed to communicate to the highest degree) is doing a disservice to your customer.

In the personal web world however, I think the idea of design changes. People design personal sites for so many different reasons, to experiment, to push technology, to learn, etc. I think success is still somewhat dependent on how you communicate that to the intended audience (usually the web design crowd in our space), but lately a lot of what people consider design is in fact "art". Meaning the content of the site is actually art pieces. And even the "design" of the site, the navigation and layout can be very experimental, almost artistic as well. In this sense the whole design/art/success issue is hard to gauge, because these types of sites mean so many different things to so many different people.

So just because someone doesn't "get" what you're doing on your site, I think doesn't necessarily make it unsuccessful.

There's obviously a fine line here though, and it will always be up for debate where that line is. Of course, that usually makes for good conversation, and a nice Theory article. ;)