The best art makes your head spin with questions. Perhaps this is the fundamental distinction between pure art and pure design. While great art makes you wonder, great design makes things clear.

Design matters because it helps us solve problems, think creatively, understand the world around us, develop empathy, and be critical. Just as you would hire an architect when building a house, design plays an important role in creating functional, beautiful, and meaningful solutions in all aspects of life.

Ben Shih

Every time we work on self-initiated projects in our studio—projects that are for ourselves and not for a client—we create our own brief, set our own deadlines, and determine the problem statement ourselves. That’s because design is not art and needs to solve a real human need. As the American minimalist artist Donald Judd famously said, “Design ha