Good Design vs. Great Design(andy.works) |
Good Design vs. Great Design(andy.works) |
"Good design" is following all the classic design tips. Like a material website that implements material design correctly, is good design. And this is actually OK and better than "great design" for most situations.
"Great design" needs to stand out. And the only way to stand out is to do something weird. Take some fancy website made out of ASCII: not something you should write your IT software in, but maybe good for a portfolio.
Radical "great design" is really good for art and music: almost nobody cares about a beautiful portrait, people want something strange and creative. It's really bad for software architecture "design": when writing code, you practically never want to stray from the obvious, traditional path. For UX design and websites it's somewhere in the middle, and depends on what the software is for (e.g. business solution UX is less creative, video game is more creative UX).
If I'm downloading some app it's probably because I need it to do something. I don't give a shit about the designer's ego, I do not need my mind blown, I just want to do the thing I set out to do and move on with my life.
The problem with most design is everyone thinks they're the next incarnation of Steve Jobs and if they just get rid of more buttons and make their typography really really nice everyone will see their creative genius. So we're constantly dealing with apps and their "bold" redesigns of things that everyone understood perfectly fine before. It's incredibly frustrating. Even reading what this guy is doing on his site, it's like reinventing all the built in apps that work fine with "Bold" new versions. Yeah, I don't really need a bold new calculator or weather app.
As a graphic designer myself, most (if not all) of the colleagues I've ever met want to feel sometimes like they're artists. Since I've working for the web even before I was studying graphic design at uni I never could understand why is that goal.
I don't think this is a "Steve Jobs" thing, Jobs wasn't even a designer nor programmer but a marketeer, and a successful one. It comes way before than him, and it reaches all branches of graphic design - until at the end of the day you remember you're trying to communicate something to _someone else_.
is usable. challenges.
solves problems. enriches the soul.
functional. is fulfilling.
is invisible. is in your face.
is good process. is usually messy.
is familiar. is uncomfortable.
optimizes. discovers.
is consistent. is unexpected.
follows patterns. sets the new patterns.
is understandable. opens new vistas.
is clear. leaves room for interpretation.
gets out of the way. has something to say.
is for all. is for you.
To give two examples, sharing opinions and pieces of your life online was generally a confusing concept 15 years ago. Now it is considered a virtue by many and an important part of distinguishing oneself from their peers (or even a career in itself). Another one is new music being uncomfortable (although, of course, people would rather claim it's "bad") and in your face and that sentiment being shared by the majority. Until it "suddenly" isn't. Not because the music changed – it's a recording after all, frozen in time – but because it has changed us.
Edit.
Whoops. I spoke too soon.
I downloaded the app, and it says I have a week to decide if I want to pay 14$ a month for it.
A month! For a calculator app!
Just adding 3d doesn’t mean you’ve stumbled upon a new era of interface design.
Great design is Hell