Bob Gill and David Carson visited Riga on separate occasions as part of the Latvian Art Directors Club lecture and workshop series. In art you do what you want, in design you do what someone else wants. Art expresses something personal while design depends on communicating a message to others. Bob Gill says that the difference between an artist and a designer comes down to temperament: a designer needs to be loved every day. He needs affirmation from his target audience or client, he needs to be understood;it is the goal of his work. The artist’s message is himself, his personal view of the world. Being “misunderstood” often works to his advantage, making him intriguing to his viewers. If art is personal expression, is a designer who expresses himself in his work a bad designer? After meeting Bob Gill...

Ever since Greek philosophers questioned the relationship between form and content, the matter has been at the forefront of artistic discourse. The Western consciousness is still very much rooted in ancient theories of art as representation. Design is a part of that, and every designer will have experienced the necessity to translate content into form as clearly as possible, especially those working in advertising. It would hardly be an overstatement to admit a lack of a strong design tradition in Latvia, and it is most definitely the long isolation period that has not allowed one to prosper. I recently spotted an excellent observation of the term Soviet Design by a columnist at designobserver.com. He described the notion as a contradiction in terms, because good design celebrates the personality while Soviet regime...