My Definition of Design

To me, design is organizing materials to achieve some effect under the given constraints.

The first key component of this definition is "organizing materials." It is an important aspect because it implies that choices need to be made when organizing the materials. The word "materials" is general enough to apply to diagrams in a CAD program, couches in interior design, fabric in clothing, visual elements on a poster, etc.


The second key component is "to achieve some effect." There needs to be a purpose guiding the choices made when organizing the materials. When I make a flyer, I don't throw the elements on willy nilly. I have a purpose (generally to advertise something, such as that a journal is calling for submissions) and a target audience (students at Brigham Young University). I then organize the materials (dates for submissions, graphic[s], journal name, what types of submissions are desired, etc.) according to what the target audience will need/want to see in order to answer the purpose of the flyer (submitting papers and artwork to a journal).

The third key component, "constraints," came from a professor and is the difference between my current definition and the definition I had before I began my class in instructional design. I had originally left this component out of my definition, probably because the constraints are always present so I took them for granted. Some obvious constraints would be time, money, space, and materials. All of these factor in to limit the design in some way. Whether these constraints cause or prevent the "perfect" design is a separate debate and will be saved for some future date if I address it at all.

I will settle for now on addressing what makes for "good" design. I think this depends on whether we're discussing "good" in terms of "good enough" or as the lowest level in the progression of "good, better, best" or just as a positive adjective acting in opposition to "bad." They all kind of tie in to each other, but I'll start with the last one.

So what makes good design as opposed to bad design? I'd say a "good" design is a design that accomplishes its purpose. Little details (such as whether a shirt has a wide belt or a skinny belt, whether the bathroom door has a hinge on the right or the left, or whether the date is above the time on a flyer) all fade into the background if neither option prevents the purpose of the design from being accomplished. If the design of the earlier flyer convinces students to submit artwork or papers to a journal, then it is a good (enough) design, whether or not it could have been better or was in fact the best design possible.