What makes a design good, even great? Is it the amount of people that like a design? If for example you showed 5 designs to a target audience of 100 people would it be the one that most of them chose, or would it be the design that design critics and graphic design gurus chose? Is it how well the design works financially, for example does the new packaging design increase the sale of the product. There are just so many variables.
It sort of reminds me of the Oscars, where the films the critics love, are not necessarily the same ones the public do.
How many times have you done a few concepts for a client – you perhaps present three options, having one as your firm favourite. Sure enough the client comes back and has chosen one of the other two. I know there will be people who say “you should only submit ideas you like,” but this is the real world, yes, you may think the other two are good alternatives but generally one will clearly stand out.
Have you ever heard debates about what to charge a client. Most designers will vary their rates depending on the client. This is not to rip them off but some clients will expect more changes and so take more time. Going back to the idea of good design or opinion – working for larger companies can in fact take longer because you have a group of several people all with different opinions, all perhaps wanting to say something slightly different about their company. The more people involved inevitably leads to more stages, more cost and in some cases a weakened design.
I have bought books (not about design) which have the most beautiful typography in them, but little substance and they end up more as a coffee table book. They are perhaps a work of art in their own right, but have they necessarily done their job? Did they deliver the information they promised or did they just pad out a weak idea.
Perhaps as the old saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
How do you judge good design?
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24 Comments
From a client perspective it’s results that indicate the best design. Test what works and apply that to future designs.
Hi =) I found this site yesterday and read through some of the posts and its really good!
I’ve never done graphics before but i’m hoping to do it at uni xD so this might not be right but, i think good design is something that is effective in delivering its message to its audience, especially in advertising…but also it has to be skilful in the way it presents the message so that its not overly obvious, because that kind of makes it more clever and appealing if that makes any sense =s
I guess im saying that good design has to be effective, clever, and has to also be original =)
Hi Kai, thanks for your comment, good luck with going to uni to do graphics
Hi Qtag, Thanks for submitting your opinion based on a clients point of view
Good design should aim to please your target market.
It’s the designs you come up with that impress your peers that lead you towards coming up with great design!
Hi Tara! I’ve been working a lot with web design, but mostly the coding part, and in a lot of cases a designer from another company have made the design. At about 8 out of 10 times, I have comments on the design due to usability. That it will be hard for the user to interact with the webpage, because it doesn’t follow standards and use strange conventions. At about half the times, I can convince the designer to change the design to make it more usable, but sometimes, the client refuses and wants exactly that specific not-usable-design. And in my opinion that’s a bad design.
Usability doesn’t have to make a design ugly. But sometimes design is ugly, and it’s ok for it to be, because they sell better. Take a look at Amazon. I think it’s pretty ugly and confusing design, but I’m sure they have tested it over and over again, to make more money. So bad design on their site is probably just my opinion.
Good luck with your blog!
Great post. I think that the design industry is generally opinionated but most people and especially professionals can tell whether a design is good, even if it doesn’t suit their tastes.
Thanks for sharing this, keep up the good posts.
Hi Tara, good question, I think you have to base the success of a design on results it produces for the client. To me there isn’t a defined concept for good design just opinions.
Hi Jeff,
Sorry for some reason your comment had gone in my spam.
Thanks for your comment – good point about web design usability. Yes you are right Amazon is not pretty but very easy to navigate around (amazing how it started up, I read something about it not long ago)
Tara
As I have been in Reprographics and print for 21 years I have seen a lot of design work. First of all I can tell if the end user is a graphic designer or not.
When I started in the trade I was a bench planner. The graphic designer would have to visualize there design before we produced a match print. And in those days less was more. I would still say that less is more if you are trying to put a simple message accross. Just look at supermarkets, if there is an offer on Food then type tends to be white out of red. Even with the latest programmes that produce shadows, transparancies and other effect a simple red and White sign is still vert effective. There is nothing wrong with all these specal effects as I have seen some design done very well. But I have also seen it were the heading type uses every filter and shadow pos and it look just as bad as one of those pub menus were all the type is in old English caps. I can artwork but I can’t design. And designers have a tuff job sometimes as they have to please the paying customer.
1. Beauty is in the eye of the customer
2. Less is Sometimes more.
Hi Jacob, Many thanks or your insights into good design vs opintion
Hi Tara. I would like to say that you have got a nice blog up and running, I wish I had time my self. It kept me reading for a while last night.
Cheers Jake
Thanks Jacob, much appreciated.
Hi Tara, that’s a good question. Every website should have a clear purpose and hence target audience. This might be to generate sales, leads, provide information for example. At first I thought that a good design would be one which the majority of users like. On second thoughts I think it is more important that a website be judged based on how well it does its job. For example how well does it convert visitors, how easily does it encourage sales and satisfy its target audience? I think any measure of a website design needs to be based on the success for its owner, and the ease of use for the end-user.
How do I judge good design?
The question is very broad so I’ll simplify into three scenarios:
1) When designing for myself: 100% idealist
2) When designing as a freelancer: 3/4 idealist, 1/4 compromise. Also my clients come to me strictly from word of mouth, they get “filtered” through my network.
3) When designing for my employer: The art director has the final word. I view this as they pay me to “surrender” part of my ideals but use my design sense for the purpose of the company’s goals, which also coincides with mine.
Hi Jae
I have never thought about it as being different when you are working for yourself or working directly for an employer – interesting idea. I see what you mean though when you design working for an employer you also don’t always get to speak directly to the client which makes it more difficult.
Thanks
Tara
Good article, this.
Design is hugely subjective, but in my opinion the best websites are those which accessible, user-friendly and “clean”.
I’ve come across lots of websites which at first glance were “beautiful” or “clever” or “innovative”, but which I ultimately found to be confusing or hard to use.
Good design ought never to overlook the needs and wants of the end user.
Great design for me would come up from your clients lifestyle, passion and characteristics add up your insights
Hiring a good web design company needs lot of thinking. There are lot fo design companies that claim to be professional designers but are not.
I would say design has to be cohesive with usability. If it isn’t user friendly then its no good.
I am a firm believer that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One mans treasure is another man’s “trash”.
Good designs are directly dependent on the eye of the beholder. Arts can only judge on how a design can be perfect. People nowadays judge arts based on what they can benefit from it.
To me, there are three aspects to design: concept, style and layout.
Concept and style are very subjective – different ideas and treatments will appeal to different people – but layout is pure science. Designers should always have the basic principles in the back of their minds when developing layouts. That way that they know their work is technically sound. Good layout is good layout no matter who looks at it. Unfortunately the same is true of bad layout!
Getting the other two right is a question of accurate research and knowing what your target audience expects/will tolerate/will engage with. That’s really the clincher … most non-designers aren’t consciously aware of good or bad layout, but they know a good idea or a good look when they see it.
I think good design is definitely a very subjective thing – it is a form of art after all and art has always, to me, been about opinions. I’ve been to numerous art galleries and not… understood (I guess would be fitting) what the pieces are supposed to be.
You often see people suggesting, ‘that isn’t art’ and so on, clearly showing that it is therefore subjective and graphic design isn’t any different. You only have to look at the number of critique style areas around the web to see varying opinions on the same piece of design.
I think good design has to be effective in portraying the intended message, or else it becomes useless. I don’t think that useless has ever been interpreted as good.
But as I say, each to their own – as you pointed out in the original post, ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’.