I think designers are artists for sure. In the end everyone gets paid. Even the masters were commissioned to do work. The highly commercial aspect of design tends to give it a bad rap, its just that not many places or people commission graphic designers to do graphic design for "arts sake".
But designers work with color, space, lighting and everything else just like any other artists does. We all use different tools and mediums and many of us started off drawing or even going back farther to when we were kids and doing painting and arts and crafts
