Form Vs Function (Again)

Orange stripes on a pale beige background. Purple serif fonts. Decorative floral borders. The choices of some designers astound me and not in a good way. And yet the guilty poster that was clumsily placed on the notice board with push pins functions. There was a visibly proper information hierarchy. Mostly legible. We all get it. It's just – ugly. It was the tragic tragedy of the century.

I have to admit, I am one of those poor sods who believes that everything is design. And I really mean – everything. (Except probably the creation of the natural world. I am a staunch believer of natural selection) From the design of the mouse to the design of the motherboard inside the Mac. To me design is the factor that mitigate all the inevitable daily hassles of the real world. Here I have to say that the design of the door handle is flawed. If you have to push the door, why is there a door handle? (Instinctively, you pull a handle not push) Of course this belief gives me the impression that capital D - Designers are Gods. And in these era of complexities and information overload, Designers are truly Gods.

I am also one of those poor sods who blindly believes that the practice of design requires that problems be solved. Ask any designer what they do, and they will mostly say that they are problem solvers. Designers indeed solves problems, just that sometimes we lose track of what problems we are suppose to solve.

The pursuit of functional goals within a design project is inevitable. The business card needs to contain the contact information. The logo needs to be able to be printed in both grayscale and full color. The inclusion of functional goals in our work is what makes us designers, and not fine artists.

However, when a project becomes mainly the pursuit of the form, designers tend to complicate things to make it appears more than just what it is. Ask a designer what they do, and probably none would say they make things pretty. And yet that is what a designer does.

Form follows function. Function over form. These are mantra that are chanted by designers all over. The focus on function perhaps makes our jobs appear smarter. More important. Makes it a professional practice. To place an importance on form, makes designers, stylist. People who makes things pretty.

Perhaps it is the difficulty of justifying choices that pertain to form. It is easier to explain the necessity of a uniformed look and feel in an identity than the look and feel of the identity itself. Explaining why you choose a certain font for the headline with a - "I don't know, I just like it," isn't exactly respectable.

But that's what we do. We use our gut feeling and instinct to make choices that would make the design of that poster work. We just know and can't explain why certain fonts are better in certain situations than other fonts. A legible design is not enough. It has to be beautiful. At least to our and the client's eyes.

Form is Function. Let us make that our new mantra.

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