Unsurprisingly, since I am a fun of interior design, when I recently received an IKEA catalogue by mail I did not loose any time before scanning its colorful pages to check all the new styles in contemporary dcor and the reasonably priced furniture produced by the Swedish giant. It was at that point in time when I realized that most of the designers portrayed in that catalogue’s issue were in fact representatives of applied arts.
Interestingly enough, my online search revealed that most of the designers I liked were in fact involved in one or more art professions. From architects to interior decorators, these people applied their design and aesthetics to objects of function and everyday use, generating what is today known as applied arts. The distinction between applied and fine arts is that the latter serve as intellectual simulation to the viewer, while the former incorporate design and creative ideas to objects of utility, such as a vase, a plate, a chair, or a garden table. According to experts, the fields of industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, decorative art and functional art are considered applied arts. In the creative...