In 1506, Pope Julius II, affectionately known as Il Papa Terribile, engaged a certain Michelangelo to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The job took four years, with frequent arguments and delays over money, no doubt numerous tea breaks or the Renaissance equivalent and, one imagines, instances of Michelangelo responding to Julius' specifications with dramatic and dampening concern: 'Ah, I don't know about that. your Holiness. It's going to cost you'.
Today of course, few would argue that the frescoes are not art, but the fact is that the Sistine Chapel is first and foremost interior decoration, with a design brief set by Julius, the client.
The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is one notable example in which interior design in the analogue world can be unanimously agreed upon as art. In the digital world we live in today, where increasingly our access to other people, business and even religion is through the internet, we have new portals that allow us this interaction. Often, the interior design of this new 'architecture', web design, can be crucial to the success or failure of that portal.
Much like Michelangelo, the very best web designers are paid handsomely for their services, and yet the huge market in off-the-shelf website templates means that almost anyone with time and lots of enthusiasm can become a web designer. Given its ubiquity and focus on function, can web design be considered art?
Art and design are communicative expressions of ideas, and both use visual media to convey these expressions - often with presentation that takes technical skill and innovation.
Where art and design diverge is the driver of that expression. In art, the canvas is blank and the artist expresses a personal vision. In design, the designer produces ideas from a set of rules and parameters laid down by others. 'Art is not constricted by real-world limitations; design is always within limitations,' says Hong Kong web designer Ali Reid of Turtle Media.
Jay Forster, head of Salon de Pigeon creative studio in Sheung Wan, also believes the artistic potential of web design is restrictive. 'Fundamentally, the medium of the web is fairly dull as a canvas for art. There are infinite possibilities for creating art in varied settings, and limiting oneself to 1024 x 760 is a bit lame.'