Great Design: What is Design? (First Draft)

In our last episode, I introduced the tentative title "Great Design" for this series of articles. I have something very specific in mind when I use the words "great" and "design," and it's worth spending some time defining it.

First, "design."

You know those gorgeous old brownstones in New York City? With the elaborate carvings, gargoyles, and beautiful iron fences? Well, if you dig up the old architectural plans, the architect would often just write something like "beautiful fretwork" on the drawing, and leave it up to the artisan, the old craftsman from Italy to come up with something, fully expecting that it will be beautiful.

That's not design. That's decoration. What we, in the software industry, collectively refer to as Lipstick on a Chicken. If you have been thinking that there is anything whatsoever in design that requires artistic skill, well, banish the thought. Immediately, swiftly, and promptly. Art can enhance design but the design itself is strictly an engineering problem. (But don't lose hope -- I'll talk more about beauty in future articles).

Design, for my purposes, is about making tradeoffs.

Let's design a trashcan for a city street corner, shall we?

Let me give you some design constraints.

It has to be pretty light, because the dustboys, er, sanitation engineers come by and they have to pick it up to dump the trash in the garbage truck.

Oh, and it has to be heavy, or it will blow away in the wind or get knocked over. (True story: I once got in an accident because a trash can blew in front of our car. Nobody was hurt, not even the trashcan.)

It has to be really big. People throw away a lot of trash throughout the day and at a busy intersection if you don't make it big enough, it overflows and garbage goes everywhere. When that happens, one of the little six-pack plastic ringy-dingies will get in the ocean, and a cute little birdy will get ensnared in it, and choke to death. YOU DON'T WANT TO KILL BIRDIES, DO YOU?

Oh, also, it needs to be pretty small, because otherwise it's going to take up room on the sidewalk, forcing the pedestrians to squeeze past each other, which, possibly, when the Effete Yuppie Listening to His iPod gets distracted by a really funny joke on the Ricky Gervais podcast and accidentally brushes against the Strangely Haunted Vietnam-Era Veteran, can result in an altercation of historic proportions.

Ok, light, heavy, big, and small. What else. It should be closed on the top, so rubbish doesn't fly away in the wind. It should be open on the top, so it's easy to throw things away.

It should be really, really, really cheap.

Notice a trend? When you're designing something, you often have a lot of conflicting constraints.

In fact, that's a key part of design: resolving all of these conflicting goals.

The only goal that usually doesn't conflict is the requirement that whatever you design be really, really cheap.

What is Design?

Design as a Shared Activity

The nature of design is equally as complex as that of technology. Archer wrote that:

“Design is that area of human experience, skill and knowledge which is concerned with man’s ability to mould his environment to suit his material and spiritual needs.” 1

Design is essentially a rational, logical, sequential process intended to solve problems or, as Jones put it:

“initiate change in man-made things” 2

For the term “design process,” we can also read “problem-solving process”, which in all but its abstract forms works by consultation and consensus. The process begins with the identification and analysis of a problem or need and proceeds through a structured sequence in which information is researched and ideas explored and evaluated until the optimum solution to the problem or need is devised.

Yet, design has not always been a rational process; up until the Great War design was often a chaotic affair in that consultation and consensus were barely evident. Design was not a total process. The work of participants in the process was often compartmentalised, each having little if any input in matters which fell outside the boundaries of their specific expertise. Thus, participants explored their ideas unilaterally, with one or another participant, through virtue of their “expertise”, imposing constraints upon all others. In this way, the craftsman has a veto on matters to do with skill or availability of materials, the engineer had a veto on technological considerations, and the patron alone could impose considerations of taste and finance.

During the inter-war years the Bauhaus movement attempted to knit the design process into a coherent whole in that students were encouraged to study design in a way that was both total and detailed. That is, designers were expected to balance all the considerations that came to bear upon the design of particular artefacts, systems and environments. In this way, though, design quickly evolved into a closed activity - an activity in which all but the designers themselves has little if any valid input to make on questions of materials, taste . . . and so on. Designers came to exist within a social bubble, consulting no-one but other designers. The result was that many designs conceived particularly during the immediate post-Second World War period did little to satisfy the needs of users. Such designs were exemplified by the disastrous housing policies adopted by many local authorities in the UK who built residential tower block after residential tower block. These were essentially realisations of dreamy design concepts rather than solutions to the social, cultural and environmental needs of the local populations.

Recent years have marked a sharp reaction against the design movement, which has perhaps been personified by Prince Charles and has crusade against architectural “carbuncles”. Likewise, individuals within society have sought to express their own tastes, their own individuality, personal style and personal self-image through what they use and purchase. Thus it is that design is not an activity solely for engineers and designers but is a shared activity between those who design artefacts, systems and environments, those who make them and those who use them.

Introduction to the Elements of Design: Point

The elements are components or parts which can be isolated and defined in any visual design or work of art. They are the structure of the work, and can carry a wide variety of messages.

The elements are:

Point

Line

Form, shape and space

Movement

Color

Pattern

Texture

Point

Even if there is only one point, one mark on a blank page there is something built into the brain that wills meaning for it, and seeks some kind of relationship or order, if only to use it as a point of orientation in relation to the outline of the page. If there are two points, immediately the eye will make a connection and "see" a line. If there are three points, it is unavoidable to interpret them as a triangle; the mind supplies the connections. This compulsion to connect parts is described as grouping, or gestalt.

Gestalt is the fundamental tool the designer or artist uses to build a coherent composition. The example of a student self-portrait seen on the left demonstrates how images may be built from points, with the variations in density producing the illusion of form.

The involuntary will-to-order that we impose on a collection of points can be clearly seen when we examine the series of faces presented on the right (to see the distortions properly, you will need to click on this small image to bring up the larger version). At what stage do the apparently random points of value become identifiable as a face? At what point do they become a specific face?

The Elements: Line

A line is a mark made by a moving point and having psychological impact according to its direction, weight, and the variations in its direction and weight. It is an enormously useful and versatile graphic device that is made to function in both visual and verbal ways. It can act as as a symbolic language, or it can communicate emotion through its character and direction

Line is not necessarily an artificial creation of the artist or designer; it exists in nature as a structural feature such as branches, or as surface design, such as striping on a tiger or a seashell.

It can function independently to suggest forms that can be recognized, even when the lines are limited in extent. This can be seen in drawings such as the Saul Steinberg illustration shown here, or in Alexander Calder's minimal wire sculptures, which convey a great deal of information about the figure with the most limited line.

Lines can be combined with other lines to create textures and patterns. This is common in engravings and pen and ink drawings such as the one on the right (click and enlarge to see linear detail). The use of line in combination results in the development of form and value, which are other elements of design.

However, line is not always explicit. It can exist by implication, as the edge of forms. As young children we usually begin drawing landscapes by making outlines for earth, sky, and other objects. Gradually we learn that objects do not have such outlines and we let color changes define the edges of shapes, creating implicit lines. Thus we can speak of a horizon "line," or the "lines" of a car or a fashion silhouette, even though we know there is no literal line present.

Design vs. Art

Design vs. Art

June 21, 2007

Design (Web)

Last week, Joshua Porter wrote a post, Design is not Art, Redux. Today he posted some of his favorites from the discussion to that article.

I found both of these to be interesting reads. I agree with the distinctions that Josh is making between design and art. Design is trying to communicate to a specific audience. Art may not speak to anyone. Some of those who commented pointed out that a lot of times art is more for the artist than the public.

I am still trying to process this idea. I appreciate articles like this that cause me to think and reexamine.

Design And Art

Joshua Porter justifies one of his five principles for designing - Design is not Art. A good debate started by Leeanne Lowe, brings out points that probably every designer should ponder about.

I am not a Web or a graphics designer, neither is this debate about that. This is about looking at design as art. I am a software designer, so I am inline with Joshua when he says:

That’s a big difference between design and art. We can measure the results of design because it’s meant to solve a problem. We can see if the problem has been resolved or lessened in some way. With Art we can’t do that…other than some subjective “Do you like it?”.

The difference is the underlying purpose - its use. Design has to keep the problem, the user, the usage and the solution in context. However art is more personal to the designer, called the artist. Can we say that the urge to design is more out of solving problems, maybe for others or self, while art is more out of the artist’s personal feelings and perception.

I consider design to be more institutionalized than art, in the sense that there are standards and norms and best practices. There are more constraints in design when compared to art, usually imposed by the user and the user’s environment. However, this does not mean that design and art cannot overlap. They can and they do in many cases. However, whether it is design or art depends on why it is being done.