What makes something a design for me is that in the beginning there was probably a design brief.  There were specifications the design needed to fulfil, there was a job it needed to do, there was a message it needed to communicate.  

To have something that is art is great – it just might not be fulfilling anything other than gaining your admiration of it. As some people say, art is subjective. Depending on your tastes anything could really be art to you.  Landscapes could be your ideal or dogs playing poker – its really up to you.  

However, with design it’s a little different.  Something can look good but not be remotely useful in doing the job it was intended for. At this point, no matter how good it looks it is actually badly designed.

In fact when it comes to design, meeting the purpose of the design is more important than how it looks.  You can still have a good website that is easy for people to navigate but just doesn’t look good.  If your customers still get to where they need to go the design hasn’t failed completely – it’s just not great. 

To reach that level of great design you need to have something that does it’s job well and efficiently and on top of that is beautiful to look at, fascinating to experience and makes people want to look at it or use it again.