What Is Design; What Is a Good Design: Function and Emotion

What is design? and what is a good design?

       I believe these are big questions that have a wide variety of answers that could be debated endlessly. Therefore, since there’re no certain right answer, I’m not trying to draw an answer to these questions here. However, I’ll try to provide my personal view, experience and understanding to the two questions. 

First of all, for what I think design is, I believe design is a gift to humans just as the gift of language. It is not something nor an ability that we have to learn in order to get it. With our creativity, I believe it is our nature that when we want to create a certain thing for a certain purpose we “design”. We cannot create things without designing them. That is, when cavemen needed something to cut the raw meat thousands of years ago, they not only just invented stone knifes, but they “designed” a stone knife, designed its shape, and even designed a handle attached to it so that it would be easier to hold in their hands. 

       For the second question about how to judge whether a design is good or bad, and whether one design is better than another. For my personal view, I believe one important element to design is the function. I would say the design of a stone knife was a brilliant idea, but I would also agree that a japanese katana has a better design than a stone knife. Why? Because a katana is considered a better design with its better function. It cuts better due to the new techniques used to create the katana, in comparison to the first stone knife as more resources were made available. And I believe when an object works better, it is a sign that some people have put some ideas and thoughts into it; and with the thoughts and ideas it becomes a better design.  

       However, although function is important to design, I believe a good design also contains another important element which is emotion. A good design contains not only better function but also an emotional interaction when people look at it or use it. When people design an object they also put their emotion into the object. It is like when we see Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream that we can really feel the anxious and vexatious mood he wanted us to feel. A good design has strong emotional connections. When we connect our emotion with the designer and feel what the designer want us to feel through the designed object, the object itself is a good design.   


image from: icollector.com