Design is: Usable and Beautiful
This is the first post in a series I’m calling “design is:” based on my years as an interactive and graphic designer. I’m a self-taught designer, have worked on a ton of different types of projects by myself and with large teams, and have learned a number of things along the way. I’m using this series to try and document the things that I’ve learned, and hopefully pass on some of knowledge to the next wave of designers.
“I strive for two things in design: simplicity and clarity. Great design is born of these two things.” — Lindon Leader
Make It Usable
A good design must first be something that’s usable, which means it’s simple and clear on how to understand the design. We can have beautiful designs, but first they must work well. After all, a coffee cup can look amazing but if it drips coffee all over my illustrious beard, it’s a bad design. There can be levels of how easily and quickly someone can understand your design, but at the end of the day, a good design must be able to be used and understood by the target audience. In order to create a usable and understandable design, we must strip away all the things that distract the audience from their goal and aim for only keeping what supports that goal. Usable = Simplicity + Clarity.
Make It Beautiful
May I be so bold to suggest, that good design still needs to be beautiful? That usable + beautiful are two sides of the same coin? In my mind, a beautiful design means it’s timeless, aesthetic, and elicits the appropriate emotional response. I’ve always loved sitting in a big pillowy lazy boy recliner, they are some of the most functional and comfortable chairs we can rest our backsides on. The problem is, they’re ugly. There are no clean lines, they often come in colors that only work with a Grandma’s decor (sorry Grandma), and I feel no excitement when imagining it in my living room. Design that is only usable, is missing something. It works, and that’s it, it’s minimum viable design. Good design combines both the function with the excitement of something that’s beautifully crafted. This is what creates joy in people using your design. This is what creates repeat users and customers, a design that is both easy to use and beautiful to look at.
Isn’t this the classic “Good vs. Great” design debate? We can definitely get lost in semantics, maybe though, we can redefine good design to include being both usable and beautiful. That one without the other is incomplete. One might say we can get by with functionality only, and it’s true (Craigslist being a classic example), but I‘m suggesting we need more beauty in this world. That it’s a worthwhile goal to make beautiful things. Beauty inspires, and someone who’s inspired is more likely to go out and create something beautiful and in turn, inspires others. It becomes a cycle of creativity beauty, and who doesn’t want to live in that kind of world?
Next time we are designing something, let’s maybe think of it by being both usable and beautiful, and just maybe this world will become an even more beautiful and inspiring place to be.
