What is good design?

8 MIN READ

We here at Quick Pickle Design recently had an opportunity to talk with Sebastian Tianbini. We wanted to know from his perspective, what is good design?

Here’s what we learned: 

QPD Staff Writer: Sebastian Tianbini, thanks for being here with us today.

Tianbini: Thanks. It’s good to be here.

QPD Staff Writer: Let’s get right to it. What is good design?

Tianbini: Well, it’s easy to think about design as a discipline of aesthetics, creating visually appealing objects or environments; design as a method of negotiating factors like color, shape, and texture. And through these forms, good design evokes emotions, communicates ideas, and enhances our overall experience. This is all true, but I think good design is so much more.

QPD Staff Writer: That statement, alone, might sum up what most people think of as good design. Why do you say there’s so much more?

Tianbini: Design isn’t just about looks; it’s also about how well something works. Beyond the physical appearance of objects, it’s about creating function. And negotiating form and function happen on top of underlying structures and the systems that govern them. 

QPD Staff Writer: Ok, can you elaborate on what you mean by “underlying structures and systems?”

Tianbini: Sure. When someone designs something, their design influences how we interact with that thing, be it a product, environment, a piece of information, or an experience. Throughout history, civilization has observed our collective interactions with good and bad design and we can see the patterns or common themes that evoke a sense of good design. These days, we have a robust set of rules to help guide us through a good design process in all kinds of disciplines. Those rules are essentially a system, that in practice, govern our design process.

QPD Staff Writer: I would think most people consider designers as creative types – the “think outside the box” people. When you say design is about rules and governance, it makes it sound like a designer really isn’t exercising creativity, but rather, a good designer is really just a good rule follower. Am I hearing that right? 

Tianbini: Yes. But being creative and following rules are not mutually exclusive pursuits. Design is the systematic balancing of the forces of form and function. That’s not easy to do. The creative part is being creative within limitations. And that’s life, my friend – being creative within the forces outside of our control.

QPD Staff Writer: So a designer is not purely a creative artist but maybe a mix of an artist and a … uh …

Tianbini: And a technician. Of course, great artists are also often great technicians. But when I think of an artist as a technician, I think of their technical skills rooted in manipulating tools and materials to create an object or performance. Whereas, a designer is also a technician of thoughts, ideas, and meaning, arriving at decisions through systematic thinking and systematic work. I wouldn’t split hairs on this. Artists can be systematic and they can create meaning. But I would say in the broader sense of all art forms, systems thinking and meaning are not required for a pure artist, whereas they typically are for a designer.

QPD Staff Writer: Ok, forgive me for not grasping this entirely. Systematic thinking?

Tianbini: Yes, designers are systematic thinkers. They not only negotiate the forces of form and function to design and build an object, they are often designing and building meaning within a system of rules. Of course, designing furniture, for example, or designing content, are different disciplines requiring different systems. Furniture designers are concerned with making design decisions about experiences, whereas, content designers make decisions about meaning.

QPD Staff Writer: (pause/silence) 

Tianbini: Let’s just stop for a minute and break down the word design – “de-sign.” Now, let’s work backward. What is a sign?

QPD Staff Writer: You mean, like a stop sign? 

Tianbini: Sure, a stop sign. That’s a good example. A stop sign has some very systematic and highly predictable properties. When we’re driving around in our cars, we will predictably see stop signs where two streets intersect. Their shape is always an octagon. They are always colored red with white letters and a border. There are rules for the minimum height of the sign post, and a maximum distance the sign can be from the road, and so on. And of course, a stop sign has a very specific meaning as its function – “Stop!”

QPD Staff Writer: Yes, of course.

Tianbini: And a stop sign is part of a larger system among other types of traffic signs that each have their own predictable form and function. How we interact with signs is extremely important. It can be a matter of life or death if we don’t follow the rules of the signs we see on the road. Traffic signs are designed to keep us safe and a lot of research has gone into the rules.

QPD Staff Writer: I’ve never thought of it that way before. Honestly, I would have thought all of this to be a boring part of city planning or something. But I guess you’re right. Signs are part of a larger system that help us interact with the world so we can have good experiences. That’s design.

Tianbini: Exactly. A designer “de-signs.” They deconstruct an objects into form and function, and the function will be denoted with a direct or implied meaning. Then the designer re-constructs the objects to create new forms, new functions, new meaning, all within the rules of a system.

QPD Staff Writer: Does design always have to create meaning?

Tianbini: Well, if we take the word design literally, I would say yes. It’s about making meaning and decisions. Think of all the other words that share sign as the root word – your signature is the nature of your personal sign. When we’re describing something of primary importance, we call it significant. When we make a decision to match a person to a set of responsibilities, we say we’re designating that person; Or if we match a person to a specific task, we might call that an assignment. The word sign is everywhere. We probably use sign several times a day without thinking about.

QPD Staff Writer: (pause) I have to say, this is all very interesting, but this doesn’t make the practice of design sound very creative at all. It sounds highly systematic, lots of rule following. Where’s the fun in that? I mean, I get the need for safety on our roadways and all, but this makes design not what I thought is was at all. I’ve lost the whole creativity part of design when you take it to a place of systems and rule following.

Tianbini: I understand. Let’s see if I can give you an example that shows how systems thinking and creativity work together. Since I brought up root words and language, consider this. Everything we’ve been saying in this entire conversation comes from our understanding of a mere 26 letters of the English alphabet – 26 little building blocks we’ve constructed over and over to create new meaning that we’ve shared with each other over the last few minutes. And I don’t think we’ve even used all 26 building blocks.

QPD Staff Writer: Ha, yeah, I don’t think either of us have used a word with the letter z in it. Have we use an x?

Tianbini: Who knows? I’m certainly not keeping track at that level. When we speak to each other, we’re not paying close attention to the fact that we’re following some very systematic rules for how letters form words, or how words form sentence structures. We just do it. We’re all designers when it comes to knowing a language. Even little kids can use the rules of language intuitively. Think about language for a moment. Language is an incredibly powerful system. We can create what seems like an infinite amount of original meaning when we creatively express ourselves and it all comes from a very small number of building blocks in a system.

QPD Staff Writer: That’s actually pretty amazing, isn’t it?

Tianbini: I think so. It’s mind-blowing, actually. And the higher up you go in the construction of a language system, the more creative it gets. 

QPD Staff Writer: Can you elaborate?

Tianbini: Sure. At the base level of letters, we tend to follow strict rules we call spelling, and with sentence structure, we call grammar. But the constructs larger than sentences start to be less about rules and more about guidelines. These guidelines are what we typically call style. There are all kinds of styles. Style isn’t confined to fashion. We have several writing styles, for example. There’s persuasive writing, technical writing, scientific writing, creative writing. These forms of writing all have their own style guides. Think about all the storytelling styles we see in movies. There’s drama, who-dun-it mysteries, comedy, rom-com, action, adventure, all kinds of movie styles – or genres, as we also call them. There’s a seemingly endless amount of creativity in storytelling. Of course, if we’re talking movies, we’re also talking about a combination of language systems. The language of imagery and the language of music, to name just two. Creativity and rules go hand-in-hand.

QPD Staff Writer: I like this concept of infinite creative variance coming from a finite number of building-blocks.

Tianbini: Yes, but don’t lose sight of the systems at those higher, more creative levels. Hollywood movies follow very common systems of structure. You show me any genre of movie and I will tell you the basic structure of the story; and with a fairly high level of predictability, how the story will end. 

QPD Staff Writer: How can you know how a movie will end?

Tianbini: I might not know the exact details for how the movie ends at the surface level, but the basic structure is fairly predictable.

QPD Staff Writer: Can you give me an example?

Tianbini: Just think about every action/adventure movie you’ve ever seen. There’s the main character whose character flaws or weaknesses are revealed early in the story. That character is faced with some sort of challenge, some sort of situation that tests their courage. And of course, our hero is always reluctant to accept the challenge, but forces become so great, they rise to the challenge, they overcome their weakness, they find their courage, and they defeat the dark forces of the world – whatever that might happen to be in a particular story. And the end of the story has a resolve. Everyone lives happily ever after. It’s really quite a predictable structure, at least among the big Hollywood blockbusters. Star Wars has a well-known twist on this familiar structure. The hero fails to rise to the challenge and falls to the dark side. But you get the gist. Creative movie makers are following the rules of several well-understood systems.

QPD Staff Writer: I guess you’re right. There is a pretty clear pattern, even in storytelling and movies.

Tianbini: Yeah, painfully so, sometimes. Not very creative, when you think about it. To be fair, there are several systems at play in the making of a movie, business systems included. Every decision is a negotiation of form and function to get the best result within limitations.

QPD Staff Writer: Ok, I think I get it now. Design is about using well-understood systems to combine form and function. And with meaning being a specific type of function. Good design reflects our creative decisions. It’s our ability to strike the right balance of form and function within limitations or forces outside of our control. 

Tianbini: You got it. Others might see it a little differently, but this is what good design is for me.

QPD Staff Writer: Great stuff T! Thanks for your time today.

Tianbini: Thank you!