Blogless

Reading Paul’s post from Wednesday, I was reminded how much work is performed by the word “design” and how many domains it crosses over. Poynor stakes a claim for greater emphasis on the visual in design, but as Paul wisely points out, a lopsided account of the discipline is unproductive.

Certainly, the way something looks is important, but this isn’t the only criteria for a design. John Maeda writes:

[I]n Japanese there is the word sekkei, which connotes designing a mechanism, system, or technology with rationalized metrics for quality. Dezain, on the other hand, goes beyond an object’s function to how it makes us feel.

This seems to be the right idea. However, such a definition places no limitations on how sekkei or dezain are accomplished or in what proportion. Something that works well can make us feel good; it doesn’t necessarily have to look good. Similarly, as Donald Norman points out, something that looks good can make us think it works well. Both might be considered good designs by their users.

The lesson here is that even as we try to isolate what a good design needs, design can never be so formulaic. Experience tells us that sometimes, when everything is accounted for, it still doesn’t add up.

The truth is, it’s not all that useful to separate the different aspects of a design. Design is everything taken into consideration. As Bryan Lawson writes:

“A piece of good design is rather like a hologram; the whole picture is in each fragment. It is often not possible [to determine] which bit of the problem is solved by which bit of the solution.”

Whether it is an object, a process, or the field itself, design can’t be fragmented so easily. To understand it all, we need both thinking and making; structure and surface. When we read articles like Poynor’s, we should recognize them for what they are:

Anyone who tries to draw battle lines around what is and is not design isn’t promoting design. They’re promoting an institutional view of design.

I don’t think it’s constructive to try and isolate one implementation from another. Whatever form it takes, design should be rigorous, not shallow. We can all agree on that one.