Interview with Ray and Craig
Raymond Bono works as a consultant in various positions of art direction. He is currently consulting for Frye Boots.
Craig Tudhope is a textile designer currently working both as a freelancer and at American Eagle.
This is an excerpt from our interview.
Q: Does a designer have a responsibility to society? If so, what is it?
R: It depends on what you are designing but the answer is probably yes because as a designer you are producing something that is for someone.
Q: How does it differ from a “fine” artist’s responsibility to society?
R: I don’t think a fine artist has a responsibility to create something for someone else. It’s a more introspective type of thing. It’s about exploring your self and sharing that with others. It can affect the world but you don’t have a responsibility to.
C: But you can push (as an artist) people’s way of thinking. Like a Damian Hurst or you can shock someone.
R: But art is not observed by everyone the same way. If I’m designing a pair of socks you’re going to put them on your feet. If I’m designing a lamp and I’m putting it in a store, you don’t have to like the lamp but it’s there so the person buying shoes can see. If I’m an artist and I’m making a giant sculpture it’s more about how I feel and each person looking at it is going to take it a different way.
C: Yeah but I’m sure it’ll start up a bigger variety of emotion in someone than, I don’t know, I’m saying that and then I think about Alexander McQueen. What he did was, from such an artistic perspective. And his shows were more than just fashion, they were art instillations and I think that makes him a fine artist. And in that show he was more artist than designer, but in his life he was both.
R: But also, that’s a whole machine. It’s not just him it’s tons and tons of people, visual people, audio, seamstresses, art directors, photographers. He was walking the line between art and design and he was an amazing designer and an amazing artist but all that machine of design sort of lived without him. Obviously it moves on without him and it was more than his creative genius, it was the fashion machine.
