ARTICLE SUMMARY: When I was in the Navy and just out of boot camp in 1970 the first three months on my new ship was spent in the galley making powdered apple sauce for the evening meal. About a half hour into the meal the mess deck chief came back and taught me a lesson I’ll never forget. I had put out the apple sauce and no body was touching it. The chief told me that if you want people to eat this stuff you have to dress it up.
He proceeded to take a handful of cinnamon powder and sprinkle it on top of what was out there and said now watch this, in fifteen minutes the apple sauce was gone. He told me remember, you either dress it up or throw it out. His message was packaging is everything, it’s what catches the eye of the buyer. But, we know looks aren’t everything.
“Is it good design, or does it just look good?” by James Harrison looks at design today and how there are a lot of designs out there that look great but they are anything but user friendly or solves a problem. In his article he looks at
- Is it beautiful because it works?
- People like pretty things
- Function, when it counts
Good design goes beyond aesthetics. While something that looks good can be appealing, good design also needs to be functional, user-friendly, and purposeful.
In this age of online shopping, companies know full well that more people are buying things online, never holding them, feeling them, trying them on, and companies are taking advantage of this. You are bombarded daily with ads for everyday products that have been given an aesthetic (and price) glow-up. You have to assume (at least from product reviews), that many of these designs are equivalent or worse in terms of their function. It makes you wonder what is the designer thinking, why can’t beautiful things just work?
There is a lot of good information to unpack in this article and well worth reading.
let us know what you think in the comments.
