Conceptual versus Concept Ideas such as ‘concept’ and ‘conceptual design’ are often used interchangeably, which leads to confusion. ‘Conceptual’ is often equated with crazy, funny and especially different. An idea is formulated, mostly in the form of a metaphor, that has the potential to generate an iconic image. The result is often then merely an illustration of the idea. However, conceptual design was never intended to be like this! The confusion regarding this idea was partly caused by the art world. The term ‘conceptual design’ is derived from the pure design strategies from the Conceptual Art movement. However, when the group Young British Artists (YBA) was launched in the 1990s by the advertising guru Charles Saatchi, that designation became synonymous for art that has the blatant intention of breaking away from traditional techniques like sculpture and painting. To oversimplify things... everything that was clearly meant as art, but was not made with traditional techniques, was suddenly called conceptual, while the YBA work should maybe be considered more as commentary on the (a priori) concept ‘Art’, instead of having come into being in a conceptual way. For example, the way in which Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (the shark in a glass display case filled with formaldehyde) came into being Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991.
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Socrates is a philosopher