Function before Form

September 24, 2010 - By

I’ve been a designer for years; and I’ve only just been coming to realize that Function is more important to me than Form.

As a designer I have some habits (likely annoying for those around me!) that I can’t let go: when I get a menu at a restaurant I instantly start thinking about typography and colors. When I’m sitting in a car for the first time I like to think about the use of the space, dashboard layout and how we fit in. When I look at graphics I even try to decide where the vector nodes are. I’m really a nerd for this stuff.

There is a difference between an artist and a designer; a design is supposed to marry beauty with purpose (I can’t place who I’m quoting at the moment). To me that purpose is way more important that the look of it. This is startling for me since I have been thinking I was a designer before all else (as far as careers go anyways). User Experience is the most important aspect of a project by far. I plan to gather some examples for a future post.

I have also come to realize that I’m way more passionate about brainstorming ideas and abstract problem solving than actually making designs! I have recently just filled an entire Moleskin with ideas and experiment fodder. Hopefully this will all be executed or discussed in some form on August Lark some day, but I’m more interested in starting a new notebook.

Being Creative is fun, and is my favourite thing about me.

Categorized in:

This post was written by ArleyM