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yoamomonstruos/Pretty != Functional

Created August 20, 2012 21:20
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A rant on the current state of digital design.
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Pretty != Functional
Trends seem to be becoming more and more of a plague within design. With the rise of sites such as Dribbble, Forsst and the likes, these trends are increasingly being reinforced by talented but narrow minded "designers". Why the quotations? Because I'm becoming more and more skeptical about where we draw the line between design and simply making something look pretty.
Lately, I've been not only thinking about how artificial intelligence and computer learning play a roll in todays society, but also how it will affect our future. What stops a machine from knowing what is trendy and aesthetically pleasing to us and then apply that style to a predefined template or wireframe? Would that still be classed as design? And that in turn leads me to question whether a lot of the design we see online today is actually design or just "designers" applying a trending style without thinking about a greater picture. If I have a wireframe and then download a bunch of freebies and apply those styles to that wireframe, is that still design? I'm not sure.
Yes this is a bit of a rant, but it seems to me that sites like Dribbble are encouraging people to make things pretty without thinking about user experience or how the actual end product will function. By classifying UX as a completely separate job, does that mean that a UI designer's job is to just "make it pretty"? To me design involves solving a problem. I don't want to be someone that just sits on photoshop, taking wireframes and making them fit to brand guidelines or simple look pretty and I know I'm not the only one.
I just don't understand the need to imitate leather, stitching, basically any real world object within a design. Skeumorphism is really not needed, it doesn't fit with the way we engage with our digital world. I'm not going to go in to this, as there are plenty of brilliant articles about [skeumorphism](http://designedbygold.com/2011/10/the-metaphors-breaking-the-future/).
All in all, I'm fed up with the current attitude towards design and particularly UI design. I want to make things, I don't want to imitate things and that is why I'm not sure that I find these design communities useful anymore. It's also the reason why I've learnt to code. Thinking about and then building the whole experience I find it helpful to be able to design the whole experience and not just what the user sees.
**Pretty != Functional**
*Agree/Disagree with what I'm saying? If you like you can drop me a line via [Twitter](http://twitter.com/yoamomonstruos)*
Raw
pretty-is-not-always-functional.md

Trends seem to be becoming more and more of a plague within design. With the rise of sites such as Dribbble, Forsst and the likes, these trends are increasingly being reinforced by talented but narrow minded "designers". Why the quotations? Because I'm becoming more and more skeptical about where we draw the line between design and simply making something look pretty.

Lately, I've been not only thinking about how artificial intelligence and computer learning play a roll in todays society, but also how it will affect our future. What stops a machine from knowing what is trendy and aesthetically pleasing to us and then apply that style to a predefined template or wireframe? Would that still be classed as design? And that in turn leads me to question whether a lot of the design we see online today is actually design or just "designers" applying a trending style without thinking about a greater picture. If I have a wireframe and then download a bunch of freebies and apply those styles to that wireframe, is that still design? I'm not sure.

Yes this is a bit of a rant, but it seems to me that sites like Dribbble are encouraging people to make things pretty without thinking about user experience or how the actual end product will function. By classifying UX as a completely separate job, does that mean that a UI designer's job is to just "make it pretty"? To me design involves solving a problem. I don't want to be someone that just sits on photoshop, taking wireframes and making them fit to brand guidelines or simply look pretty and I know I'm not the only one.

I just don't understand the need to imitate leather, stitching, basically any real world object within a design. Skeumorphism is really not needed, it doesn't fit with the way we engage with our digital world. I'm not going to go in to this, as there are plenty of brilliant articles about skeumorphism.

All in all, I'm fed up with the current attitude towards design and particularly UI design. I want to make things, I don't want to imitate things and that is why I'm not sure that I find these design communities useful anymore. It's also the reason why I've learnt to code. Thinking about how a product should work and then building the whole experience. I find it more helpful to be able to design the whole experience, rather than just what the user sees.

Pretty != Functional

Agree/Disagree with what I'm saying? If you like you can drop me a line via Twitter

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