Art Post 17 Design is Undervalued

I have been thinking for the thousandth time, design is so undervalued. Creative fields are given less funding in schools and are the first to get cut. Artists and designers are under-payed. Work is hard to find. Some people think they don’t need to spend money on creative professionals and think they can do it themselves. Later, people suffer from this mistake in an undercurrent way. Design is so universally important. Animals choose good design over poor design. Different styles from different cultures – such as Eastern and Western gardens — lean on the same universal principles. The artistic choices around us can affect our mood so much. Colors on the walls, too much or too little furniture, the flow and accessibility of a house. City planning can decide how we live our lives. 

Some people might think that artistic things can be overlooked, or that being uncomfortable with something like a poorly laid out kitchen is a petty thing to complain about. But using that poor design everyday has an effect on you. I am sensitive to design and art, and it’s a real, substantial feeling. Not everyone understands. As a child, I craved beauty and nature. But my world was stuffed with asphalt, cars, and strip malls.

Maybe that dystopian environment had its own beauty: strong plants that lived out of the cracks in the narrow sidewalks littered with broken glass and other debris. And mushrooms that popped through asphalt! They lived! They looked better than some garden flowers being given all the love in the world. But I do hope their descendant plants and mushrooms have a nice green strip now. The green strip is the vital separation between car and pedestrian that goes by twenty different names. I find the non-naming of the green strip suspicious, since it has such a profound impact on communities.

Asya