What is good design?

Good design is not just about looks - functionality, purpose and originality also play a role.

BY Alice Rawsthorn | Jun 11, 2008

I've learned (the hard way) not to do it, but if random strangers - like taxi drivers, or whoever's sitting on the next airplane seat - ask what I do and I'm rash enough to confess to being a design critic, they invariably follow up with: "So what is good design?"

The stock answer is that good design is generally a combination of different qualities - what it does, what it looks like and so on.

But as our expectations of design change, so do those qualities and the relationships between them. Let's look at what they are - and where they stand - right now:

1. WHAT IT DOES

This is the non-negotiable. Whatever it is, and whatever other great qualities it has, it can't be well designed if it doesn't do something useful.

Even better is if that something couldn't have been done before. That's always been so, all the way back to the early 200s BC when Emperor Qin Shihuangdi conquered China equipped with a very early example of good design.

The armies of the day were led by archers who made their own weapons, with the result that each archer's arrows could only be fired from his own bow.

Qin insisted that all arrows be made to the same length with identical, replaceable tips. If an archer ran out during a battle, he could use his colleagues', and if he died, his ammunition wasn't wasted.

Even today it's possible for something to qualify as good design simply by fulfilling its function efficiently. Take Google's logo. Stylistically, it's awful with a dodgy font and the twee illustrations for the customised "holiday logos" with which Google marks special occasions such as Christmas Day, St Patrick's Day and landmark birthdays.

But those tweely illustrated logos are so much fun - like a gift from Google - that they make us think more fondly of it. Job done.

2. HOW IT LOOKS

Few things enrage design purists more than suggesting that good design is all about looks. It isn't.

But Qin's arrows and Google's logo are exceptions, because function is seldom enough either, and there's nothing wrong with enjoying eye candy.

That's why textbook examples of good design - such as Marcel Breuer's 1920s chairs, or Dieter Rams' 1950s electrical products for Braun - tend to score highly on form and function.

Eric Layton 27 September 2009