Musings on Successful Design
The evil time sucking SM bird
A couple of weeks ago on Twitter, where I spend an inordinate amount of time absorbing the wit and wisdom dispensed in 140 characters or less and trying valiantly to throw the odd riposte back into the milieu, Veronika Miller (known to the Twitterati as @Modenus) brought up the idea of a mini-blog-off (no, no, not a diminutive Russian). She had posted an entry on her own blog about quirky design moments and objects, provoking the question: what is successful design?
A few of us took the bait she proffered and verbally batted it around a little until the joint blogging idea was suggested. So here we are, drawn like flies to –(oh never mind…): please check out Paul Anater, Veronika Miller, and the DogWalkBlog and their respective perspectives.
Wise interweb pundits
Being a researcher and the cautious type – not to mention a “wordie” – I started with looking at where the actual word “design” comes from. When you check it out in the dictionary the definition is a bit of a let-down; it comes across as rather technical, as a construct or an assembly approach e.g. if you do this and this and this, you will have a “design” – as if it can be taught or practiced. Which is often as far as it progresses, or rather, as far as it allowed to progress – becoming a sort of manipulated topiary of function; it has a certain basic appeal but it lacks oomph . And this is where the divergence begins, where the good, the bad, and the fugly begin to shake out…
The operative word would be “successful”. I would suggest that, whereas it is good and even desirable to have a basic foundation: the brick by brick approach of knowing fundamentals such as color theory, pleasing proportion, ergonomics, and the rest of the Design 101 syllabus – excellent design cannot be taught or learnt from an instructional video, lecture, or reference book. It is absorbed, it is earned, it is basically intangible. It requires experience, sensitivity, and willingness to think outside the box of required reading materials. Design that is derived from that limiting set of approved tools might provoke the observation “… and that’s all she rote”. It comes up short and does not satisfy.
Island by Fu Tung Cheng
I am a concrete artisan. I work with an amazingly versatile material, unrestricted in dimensional expression, as well as nearly all other physical attributes. I am privileged to be able to express myself through this medium by integrating my clients with their environments, creating functional art with cast concrete usually in the form of custom countertops, sinks, and other architectural surfaces. I came to this craft from a carpentry background, bringing the requisite manual skills, a good work ethic, and a familiarity with kitchens and bathrooms. That was it. My adopted material of choice was foreign to me – at least the high performance, high capability variety with which I fulfill my commissions. I had to learn how to “be with it”. I taught myself the basics and grew into a comfort with this very complex material we know as “concrete”. I am also completely untrained in design and have had (am continuing) to develop a “feel” and a style of expression, a design sensibility which is manifest when experienced by the user and/or an onlooker. I have found this process to be very rewarding and am beginning to have it validated by the feedback and comments coming from my clients and other people who have seen my work. And this brings me to my very simple but very encompassing postulate concerning successful design: I know it when I see it. I will leave it to the other, more learned practitioners to tell me exactly why this or that pushes my buttons (I bow before your wisdom) – I am learning as fast as I can, dammit! – in the meantime, I will trust my gut and the seat of my pants. How proletariat.
June 22nd, 2010 at 3:22 pm
“integrating my clients with their environments, creating functional art ”
That’s the crux of design, right there. Well said.
June 22nd, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Nice post! I’m enjoying each of your writing styles! If we were all honest with each other, we are all still learning. Know why? Because the essence of design is neverending and always changing. So, successful design today will look different than successful design in ten years. I agree that much of it is “gut” related.
June 22nd, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Very good post and yes I agree with Amy, none of us ever stop learning and we always have to re-invent ourselves, our creativity, our approach to new technologies, even our expectation of clients. It changes and change is good.
Now Richard….about your flies analogy…tsk, tsk
June 22nd, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Thanks all for popping in. This is a great conversation we have begun – I blame Veronika. Unanswerable questions are the best – everyone gets to be right and everyone learns something! The number of directions in which one can turn while examining this query is a good indication that it is a subject worth exploring. Many viewpoints make this a richer, more enjoyable world also. I’m loving the dragonfly’s eyes effect, thanks to everyone both here and the other blogs.
June 22nd, 2010 at 5:48 pm
I agree with Becky – ‘functional art’ is exactly what good design is for me! Technically I’m a “trained” designer but sometimes I still only know it when I see it! Training only gives you tools but it can’t give you your gut instinct and creativity which obviously you have.
June 22nd, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Thanks MS for checking in! Guts are messy, but without them the world would be a vast pre-digested TV dinner. Ugh. How’s that for a home-made metaphor?
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:14 am
[...] A challenge to define “successful design” was lobbed by @Modenus to several of us rather cantankerous voices in response to her post on “bad design.” Not ones to back away from a challenge, we all agreed to write a blog post on each of our sites defining successful design. Mine is here; please read the others in the challenge; Paul Anatar, Veronika Miller and Richard Holschuh. [...]
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:25 am
Great musings by the proletariat! And, interesting comments by all.
I was struck by (and agree) that excellent design cannot be taught; it must come with a certain level of experience as well.
The rules help us to understand the problem and guide us to a successful end. But, they are only the means to the end and never the goal. They may help us achieve the goal; but,they can be broken. And, excellent design can be achieved without knowing them per se.
Your experience toward blending the aesthetic with function creates amazing solutions–which I believe is what design is all about.
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:57 am
Well, I’ll be damned. This is a most interesting discussion, which has kept me up quite a bit later than I’d intended. I’ve commented on the other three, so I will comment here as well. Actually, Richard, I really like the work you have done, which is why I did a blog on it a few months ago. What I found myself liking about the designs you’ve employed with your concrete is that you seem to have followed the Greek axiom, “nothing overmuch.” Decorative concrete can get WAY too busy, but yours never does. It always seems to have exactly the right aesthetic for the job it is for which it is intended.
In my comments to the lady who started this discussion I said that a furniture maker I like quite a bit (he worked in wood) felt that his furniture should just quietly do its job, which is the feeling I have when I look at the work you have done for your clients. If it’s too showy, it just doesn’t work for me. Liberace, of course, would have wanted lots and lots of glitter in his concrete countertops!
I don’t know that you can say absolutely that one is right and the other is wrong. I mean, I do actually say it, but the polite thing to do when I make such pronouncements is to add the line, “for my tastes.” And in the end, I suppose it really does come down to that, just what we find pleasing to our own eye.
June 23rd, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Hello Richard, I didn’t get a chance to comment on your post yesterday. As I continue my rounds, here are my thoughts. I agree with your comment wherein you stated excellent design cannot be taught. It is garnered from experience armed with the fundamental knowledge of the basic design rules.
The querstion still remains: what exactly is excellent or successful design? People with have different responses based on their own perception. Whatever pleases people I suppose.
July 18th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
great posts, love the info. keep up the great work.