Design is not pizza 🍕

Adam added a canvas, placed a circle, created typographic hierarchy, added color, contrast, more white space, composed, edited, deleted, made it bigger, better, worse and started again. Why?
He wasn’t sure.
Of what?
Design.
Why?
He doubts if the design is good enough.

Let’s talk about one of the most underrated existential questions — What makes a good design? Color, contrast, balance, white space, yeast and oregano. Hm!

After all the learnings of design principles, color theory and compostion there comes the final line that breaks our heart — design has no rules. Then, what’s the whole point of going through the ‘rules’. Of course unlearning is also an essential part of learning, but it feels like you’ve ended where you started.

From newspaper designs in 90 whatever to social media design in 20 whatever, we’ve come a long long way. If it’s visual exposures that we are talking about, we are already tanned and tired. An average Adam sees a million designs a day. Some ‘good’ designs with perfect alignment and some ‘bad’ designs with comic sans. Some ‘good’ designs with brutal textures and some ‘bad’ designs with Helvetica.

What’s a good design and what’s a bad design?
Not easy to answer. Perhaps, impossible. You can be judgemental, but never correct. Because, design, by nature is subjective.

What’s a good pizza and what’s a bad pizza?
Damn odor, mouldy, too hard of a crust, greasy cheese, spoilt toppings and more. You can be certain.

Do we still debate about what’s a good and what’s a bad design?
No. Design cannot be good or bad. It’s not pizza. The question is, does it work or not.

Well, that’s a better question to ask.

Design is (in a way) like beauty. You can say someone/something is beautiful if it satisfies your criterias. Every individual has his or her own criterias to say ‘it’s beautiful’. It’s a perception. So is good design. The real question to validate a design should be ‘does it work?’

Every design has a purpose. It has to. Unless the designer intends not to. The purpose is to solve a problem.

d̶e̶s̶i̶g̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶a̶u̶t̶i̶f̶u̶l̶
design to solve a problem

When the design is to solve a problem, it sets a clear validation. You know if it works or not. It no more seeks for judgmental opinions. It is no more in the good vs bad debate.

Before you get to the blank canvas, ask “Okay, so what’s the purpose of this design?” To elaborate : Who is it for? Where does it go? What does it has to convey? What should be the emotional reaction? and so on.

The questions set a brief or checklist that the design has to meet. And when the same is revisited after the designs are done, there will be a clear metric to judge the design.

Thanks for making it all the way to the end, I hope you found it interesting. Follow us on Instagram