What happened to design? When did it get overtaken by the researchers and the bean-counters?

Music and links from this episode

Mozart - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik allegro by Advent Chamber Orchestra

Quasi Motion by Kevin MacLeod

Walk That Dog by U.S. Army Blues

ACOUSTIC BLUES by Jason Shaw

Line-by-line notes

When graphic design first became a profession, things were simpler

Classic design used to be much simpler to understand

Dieter Rams 10 principles for good design are just as relevant today as they were in the 1970s

He said

Good design is innovative

Good design makes a product useful

Good design is aesthetic

Good design makes a product understable

Good design is unobtrusive

Good design is honest

Good design is long lasting

Good design is thorough to the last detail

Good design is environmental friendly

Good design is as little design as possible

Why do I feel like—in the pursuit of more and better design—we've forgotten quite a few of these?

Where did it all go wrong?

This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess

PLAY MID SONG

I'm going to get a little bit controversial in this episode

And try and get you to think outside your comfort zone

Especially if you're a jobbing designer right now

Controversy point one:

Designers aren't trusted to do their own jobs anymore

And designers are becoming less respected at their craft

Before a designer gets involved, often there's lots of research

Or testing

Or focus groups

Or marketing people writing lengthy documents

Then making design suggestions before the designer has even started

It seems There needs to be a focus group or a large scale research project to back up your design choices for almost anything these days

And if a designer isn't sure

They'll be asked to test two versions of a design to see which performs best

All this stuff erodes the soul of a design

Design isn't as simple as that

Simply doing the research doesn't automatically create a good design

And the research can be, you know, wrong

Design needs to be left to the designers

Design is as much of a science as it is an art

Getting it right isn't as simple as doing the research and saying 'so and so looks like this so we need to look like this'

Design is so much more subtle than that

In the hands of a good designer, a good marketing strategy can turn into something amazing

But in the hands of a poor designer, a good marketing strategy amounts to nothing

And there's also the other side of this

The side that designers often don't get a say in

BAD marketing strategies

The research or the strategy is never said to be wrong, it's always the designers fault

Strategy and planning can sometimes directly interfere with the end design product

Many people are trying to make design a science

And design to some extent can be quantified

There's rules of design that when followed can produce passable work

But this is why I said design is as much of a science as it is an art

The science part gets you to a certain point with a design

It makes it usable, presentable, workable, and consumable by the masses

But the art part, that's why the magic lies

That's where something turns from a good design into something amazing

Something timeless

And something people talk about for years and even decades

To finish this rant up, I'm going to let you in on a little secret

Sometimes when I'm working on a piece of design

The first idea I come up with

In the first 20 minutes

Is the best idea I'll have

And sometimes, that idea is the perfect one

Sometimes I can create an entire new brand in 20 minutes

And I shouldn't be embarrassed by that

That's just design

It can't be quantified or put into a neat box

Sometimes it works in mysterious ways

And you just have to ride out the journey

OUTRO

This was AADA. I’m Craig Burgess.

Music featured in this episode was

Mozart - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik allegro by Advent Chamber Orchestra

Quasi Motion by Kevin MacLeod

Walk That Dog by U.S. Army...