The Value of Design: Form = Function

Everybody is a designer.

Not because everybody has PowerPoint. Because everything that is made, from grocery lists to skyscrapers, is designed. Using the definition of design in its broadest sense, as an act of making decisions to bring form to a thought, we all design our worlds of form and function.

What separates design professionals from Aunt Mary with her shitzu puppy web page is not HTML, InDesign or drawing skills, but understanding of and attention paid to the form and function of what we create.

Form = Function

An eternal debate of “form vs. function,” often used critically as “form over function,” is a pointless arguement on two levels. First, nothing exists without some sort of form, and everything has a function of some kind.

Whether or not form is considered in the creation of a chair, it has a size, a structure, and is made of some kind of material with its own qualities. Whether the chair functions as a comfortable seat or as a doorstop, it has some utility.

Form also informs an object’s utility…its function. If the chair looks comfy, our butts will appreciate it. If its looks fit in our self-perceptions and style, our brains will appreciate it. If it has both qualities, brain meets butt and we want to buy it.

The second level that negates the debate holds the real value design professionals offer clients and community:  form is a function in itself. An object’s  form defines how we as humans relate with it.
That relationship defines our perception not only of the object, but the person or company (brand) who designed it.

This idea of the interconnectedness of things considered opposing informed my piece in the Creating Impressions show, which I expanded to all directions of our culture. The spiral structure of the layout
suggests either a vortex or a snowball of like ideas, and the tilt puts it into motion, using the words as illustration. I have to give credit to the designer of the font Trade Gothic, Jackson Burke.

—Darryl Garland