What Is “Good” Design?
We live in a world full of ideas that are waiting to interact with us—waiting to be part of our perceptual landscape. And as designers, we are handed the responsibility to create communication—to give life to an idea and to define how people interact with this idea. To design is to create and that is truly a gift. Then must we not choose to create conscientiously? Must we not choose wisely, our words as well as our fonts?
With the advent of technology we have created a second reality, albeit a virtual one. And so, however nebulous this idea of what “good” in the world of art and design may be, it is still important to define certain guiding principles especially in context to the role of a designer as creator.
This is an attempt to weave these two realities together, drawing inspiration from all facets of creativity to construct a more unified system because in the end it is an organised mind that will bring forth, essentially, an organised reality or many realities.
Designing with Intention
How can one determine whether something is meaningful? Look for intention. What was the artist’s intention behind creating a particular art work? What message was the musician trying to transmit with a certain song?
One can turn to music to remind oneself of the profound experience one can have when listening to an arrangement of notes perfectly interspersed by silence, understood by every human being in their innermost being as an entirely universal language. How can something so abstract lead to such deep and meaningful revelations across time and space?
Creative pieces embody experiences — they are essentially moments frozen in time being relayed to the viewer who can then experience them in entirely new and unique ways.
The same can be said for digital product design. Each piece of software serves a purpose and as the designer of such an interface, one must judiciously apply the same principles of intentionality to such a process of creation. When there is intentionality within design, it transforms from being simply colours and fonts into a tool that brings order, beauty, and harmony to the world.
Less is More
“Good design is as little design as possible.”
—Dieter Rams
The best kind of design is when you cannot feel its presence within the layers of its interaction. Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself. Bad design, on the other hand, screams out its inadequacies, making itself very noticeable.
Distilling design to its purest form and then starting from there: the digital realm is crowded with information and as designers, it is our duty to curate this space such that we can create a sustainable ecosystem of ethical, honest, and purposeful design.
Another great example of how good design becomes invisible is the typeface Helvetica. Helvetica is like water is just one of the many ways one can describe the versatile and ubiquitous typeface. It is used on the signage in New York’s subway system. It is the brand identity of American Airlines, as well as American Apparel. Even if you’ve never heard of it, Helvetica has been part of your life and its personality, or lack thereof, is what lends to its fame.
Beauty & Usability
“Attractive things make people feel good, which in turn makes them think more creatively. How does that make something easier to use? Simple, by making it easier for people to find solutions to the problems they encounter.”
—Donald Norman
Many brands employ this principle, but none more so than Apple. Apple’s interface design is famously refined, focused, aesthetically pleasing, and usable. Their clean, elegant design makes their products and software easy to use. Apple bakes the aesthetic-usability effect into everything they make and it keeps their customers coming back.
While it is difficult to define “beauty”, it is important to remember that aesthetics and functionality are not independent of one another. After all, form does follow function. Beautiful objects, products, and strategies are not only more pleasing, but are actually more effective. Beautiful forms do not lack function, but rather, they are function themselves. Sagmeister and Walsh’s Beauty exhibition encapsulates exactly this message.
Made to Last
“The universe is a trillion, trillion threads moving in seemingly unrelated directions. Yet when you look at them together, they create a remarkable tapestry.”
—Richard Paul Evans
As human beings, we are connected to the web of this universe as much as a tree or a butterfly is and being creative is our way of emulating nature. By creating, we are actively participating in the flowing movements of this reality—in the nurturing of nature.
What role can we as designers and as human beings play in preserving our environment? How can we apply circular design principles such that products can be reused to become regenerative rather than wasteful?
Fighting Entropy
It is the natural tendency of things to lose order. Left to its own devices, life will always become less structured. This insight — that disorder has a natural tendency to increase over time and that we can counteract that tendency by expending energy — reveals the core purpose of life. We must exert effort to create useful types of order that are resilient enough to withstand the unrelenting pull of entropy. “The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life because everything is pulling you to be more and more complex.”
“Optimal lives are designed, not discovered.”
—James Clear
This also reveals the purpose of design and designers—in a universe where everything is always moving towards chaos, design or for that matter any art form, is a rare example of symmetry and beauty. Knowing this, one must take it upon oneself to design one’s ideal world.
In a universe where entropy rules the day, the presence of life with such organisation, structure, and stability is stunning. The human body is a remarkable example of this unlikely arrangement and when this body is used to create beautiful shapes and forms in the way of dancing, it is essentially nature expressing itself.
A designer should work on removing this chaos and building a world of beauty and harmony. The life of a designer is a fight, a fight against ugliness, just like a doctor fights against disease, for us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with Design.
Closing Thoughts
While going through this exercise, I realised that a lot of what I understood to be “good design” is actually a reiteration of Dieter Rams’ design principles. Even though what is considered to be “good” is quite subjective, I find that there are always some guidelines that one can follow when creating something.
This is an attempt to connect the different facets of the creative world together, drawing inspiration from all aspects of life, and in doing so designing a future that is more human. Understanding our role as designers but more importantly as human beings is key to creating such a future.
Resources
Guggenheim’s Identity Design — Identity and website designed by Pentagram.
The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman — A guide to human-centered design.
Helvetica — The game-changing typeface made to go unnoticed.
20 Years of Design by Apple — A coffee table book chronicling 20 years of its past and present products.
Sagmeister & Walsh’s Beauty — A visual multimedia exhibition addressing the concept of beauty.
Substrata by Biosphere — An ambient album that has a theme of cold, of mountains and glaciers, and of running water.
Hilma af Klint — Paintings for the future.
Aguahoja — An exploration of nature’s design space.
Andreas Gursky & The Landscape of Globalisation — How the German photographer turned an Amazon depot into art.
James Clear: Entropy — Why life always seems to get more complicated.
Bharatanatyam & Mathematics — Teaching Geometry through dance.
Dr. Rajyashree Ramesh’s Bharatanatyam Course — Global Music Academy, Berlin.
Dieter Rams: Ten Principles of Good Design — A reference and an inspiration for anyone interested in how and why good design matters.
La Grande Bellezza — A film that beautifully encapsulates the idea of beauty.
What is it with Yves Klein and blue? — A look at the artist’s preoccupation with the colour blue.
