What does good design mean?

"Design is directed toward human beings. To design is to solve human problems by identifying them and executing the best solution." Ivan Chermayeff

In most people’s vocabularies, design means a veneer. It’s interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains or on the sofa. But nothing could be further from the meaning of design.

In graphic design, good design reveals meaning in a predetermined path. Great graphic design communicates ideas. It makes the complex simple. It leads the viewer through organization and structure of visual elements on a specific trajectory that takes into account the media and the audience to create an intended impression. Although it is open to interpretation, with viewers bringing their set of experiences to bear for a personalized response, it guarantees that the intended main message or theme is present and understood despite audience variables.

How does the average person (a non-graphic designer) judge design? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all. Sometimes clients ask us to do things that disrupt the carefully planned organization and the design becomes less clear and the aesthetics are simply lost (read Why Keep a Dog and Bark Yourself, June 21, 2011).

But research into people’s view of human beauty revealed amazing consistency across ethnic groups as to what constitutes the most attractive features in men and women. That said, it follows that the arrangement of graphic elements including text, headline, photography and illustration, also can be judged by balance and harmony although in a skilled hand, discordant elements can also communicate a powerful message.

A study to determine if people could discern the difference between abstract expressionist paintings by artists and work done by children (or animals) showed that even to the untrained eye, the professional artist’s work was recognized as such.¹ As Hans Hofmann, an abstract expressionist painter, said, “the ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

So, apply this to your next design project. Have someone who has never seen the website homepage/brochure/package design before, and also is the target audience, comment. What do they see first? What message do they receive? As a client, and sometimes even as designers, once you have looked at something a dozen times, you lose the ability to look at it with fresh eyes.

Recently a story headlined several news outlets about an artist who looked at New York’s garbage as separate elements and assembled them in an aesthetic manner: the result…art! It’s all in how you look at it!

1 Seeing the mind behind the art: people can distinguish abstract expressionist paintings from highly similar paintings by children, chimps, monkeys and elephants. Ellen Winner, Dept. of Psychology, Boston College