Great Design isn’t Created, it is Waiting to be Discovered
By
Amazing design speaks to us on an unconscious level. We appreciate it without knowing all of the pain and suffering that the designer went through to get to the final product. We appreciate it because of its utility or simplicity and its ability to add value to our lives through beauty, or helping us solve a problem in our daily lives. This is why Apple products resonate: they solve problems we all have (technology is confusing and hard to understand) and do it in a way that is beautiful.
This evening, as I sit in the Admiral’s Club lounge in LAX, I was browsing through the beautifully designed products on Dwell. Some of these products are high art, and are priced as such. Some are crafty reboots of timeless classics, with added details of beauty or utility. One such product is the Tip Ton Chair, a take on a chair a school child would use.
The Tip Ton is a beautiful, useful product, but what caught my eye wasn’t the chair, it was the quote from the chair’s designer, Edward Barber:
“We knew what the problems were but weren’t yet aware of the solutions”
This quote perfectly captures the process of design. Wonderful designs aren’t created, they are out there, waiting to be discovered. Only in order to discover them, you first have to understand the problem that needs to be solved.
Hi Paul, I like your succinct blog post and I thought the quote by Mr. Barber was classic. It reminded me of writing business requirements, which I am in the business of, in that great requirements are not created, they’re elicited. A colleague of mine recently wrote a blog to this topic if you’re interested in checking it out: http://bit.ly/gGKRCm .
The fastest way to succeed is always to look as if you’re playing by somebody else’s rules, while quietly playing because of your own.
Among the tests of leadership will be the capacity to recognize a difficulty before it is deemed an emergency.