Design is the rather bland word for thinking a lot about how stuff looks. A designed object is one whose makers work long and hard to get it just right. Most of the world has sadly, not been well designed. It is full of office towers, ugly property developments, boring door handles, shoddy chairs, uninspiring lamps and plates and other stuff that have been deeply unloved and were thrown together in a hurry by untalented people. When I have the privilege to thoughtfully preserve a wonderful creation, it is a rare insight to the creator’s creative process.
Where many people around the world lack the bare necessities, it can be tempting to say that good design really doesn’t matter all that much. But I am arguing that it does desperately so because of a weird quirk of our psychology. We feel like and are in sense, quite different people depending on what’s in front of our eyes. A dark, brooding, threatening sky brings out certain feelings, a bright blue one others. This kind of bedroom makes you feel one way, that one another. Design matters because our identities and moods are fluid and shifting and it’s often the quality of the designed environment that determines whether we’ll feel confident or defeated, at ease or guarded, generous, spirited or alienated.
One of the great debates about how much design should matter, took place in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe between the Catholics and Protestants. Broadly speaking, the Protestants didn’t believe in spending much money on design. They put up simple, functional churches, painted them plain white inside with minimal fuss and bother. Nowadays, many Protestant churches continue to look extraordinarily cheap and basic. The intellectual thought here is that what really matters is certain ideas and getting these into your mind for your understanding - not through your senses. You can get close to God by reading the Bible in a hay loft. You don’t need a fancy building.
But the Catholics begged to differ. They invested so heavily in designing stunning stained-glass windows, beautiful carved angels and passionate renditions of the life of Christ because they fervently believe that our environments do change who we are. We may be further or nearer God depending on what’s on the wall and how high the ceiling is.
Governments have always understood and respected the underlying idea that design changes us. Nazi designers like Albert Speer paid a huge amount of attention to making sure the design would speak of Nazi values like aggression and power, just as modern German architects have tried to ensure that contemporary Berlin will project an image of democracy, peace and openness.
We mould ourselves to the spirit that emanates from the objects around us. We become a little as they are even if we are not always able to say quite how objects make us feel, we all sense a spirit of better or worse that emanates from a given set of objects. We are generally good at playing a game of what sort of person a work of design would turn into if it miraculously became human. When you call an object of design beautiful, what we really mean to say is that if it turned into a person, it would be someone we liked. Someone may be dignified or self-possessed, intelligent or adventurous. Beauty is a promise of goodness and ugliness is evocative of nothing short of despair and evil.
And that’s why beautiful design matters because it encourages our better sides. While ugly design stokes our worst ones. We need to make sure the world around us is well-designed not out of some superfluous, expensive taste, but because good design helps us to be the best versions of ourselves.
What are surrounding yourself with?
