The Designer as Today's Artist
Munari's most provocative claim is that the designer has replaced the traditional artist as the relevant creative figure of modern society. The distinction is not one of talent but of orientation: the designer works to reestablish contact between creative intelligence and the public, while the gallery artist retreats into private expression. This argument, made in 1966, anticipated decades of debate about the cultural status of design. It remains a potent corrective to the notion that design is merely applied art.