Are Designers Influenced by Art?

There was a post on the Textile Designers Group of LinkedIn recently asking whether designers are influenced by art and artist which got me thinking.

I love art and, in particular, brightly coloured pieces! I met an artist at Banks Mill Studio's last year, Deborah Allitt, who's work is really beautiful, big, bright, bold and colourful. She uses texture in her work, too, which was also a big draw for me and she's allowed me to use one of her pieces as inspiration for a new collection, which I'll be working on after 100% Design.

So, in the LinkedIn post, apparently, some design studio's don't allow their designers out into the Art Galleries to be inspired by art during their working week, even for an afternoon during an "Art Week", for example. But, to me, that isn't necessary, you can be influenced by art in all manner of ways, for example, on my iGoogle page I have several "Art of the Day" widgets which I find very inspiring, today's Van Gogh piece was "A Young Scheveningen Women Knitting" which I've never seen and is really beautiful, soft greys and blues, sensitively painted. It would be great to use as a collection, as one of the current trends for A/W 2011 is dark inky blues!