Creativity vs Design

Since I work in a marketing department, I wanted to decorate my office space with some design/marketing-related quotes. I prefer decorating with other artists' work (seriously, it weirds me out to see my own art or designs in a physical format), but when I searched for posters, I couldn't find any that I really liked and were available for sale. So I just ended up making my own.

This quote is one that is commonly misattributed to Scott Adams. His actual quote is "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep," and he has publicly stated that he disagrees with the modified version, which is why I did not credit him (you can read his opinion on the subject in his own words here). However, I disagree with his disagreement, in that I believe design is a form of art, so both "art" and "design" are still valid. Art is created with the purpose of provoking a response. Design is created with the purpose of provoking a specific response, such as persuading you to buy a product.

For this reason, I think "design" is more relevant to the overall quote than "art" - art can fulfill its intended purpose even if it's poorly-executed or incomprehensible to its viewer (for example, I am not an admirer of Jackson Pollock's works, but I can still appreciate the work he put into them and find them somewhat interesting to look at). In design, however, mistakes or poor design can have unintended results, or even turn the viewer off completely - I used to live in a town with a restaurant that I avoided for years because their logo was extremely off-putting (their food turned out to be pretty good, though). So I would argue that knowing which mistakes to keep is even more important in the design process than the artistic process, because it is the difference between a successful design and a failed one.

But, of course, that's just my opinion.

Please feel free to take a look at my other design poster here: fav.me/d9acsuy