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More on Google’s Graphic Design
The word “design” means so many different things to different people. I should have thought more about this before writing The Non-Design of Google’s Software last week, and emphasized just which aspects of Google’s software “design” I was criticizing.
Most people seemed to get my point, but clearly many missed. To be clear: In no way am I arguing that Google puts no thought at all into their user interfaces. To the contrary, clearly, they put an enormous amount of work into keeping their UIs clear and simple, and this work constitutes “design” in several ways. Simple UIs are much harder to design than complicated ones. (This is why nearly all consumer electronic remote controls suck—it’s easy to design a complicated remote with several dozen poorly-sized and -shaped buttons. It’s hard to design a remote as nice as TiVo’s.)
Design is not merely decoration, but decoration is a part of design. And that’s the part that Google seems to take little to no interest in.
Jonathan Brodsky, in a comment on my original article, pointed out Adrian Shaughnessy’s excellent March 12 post at Design Observer, “Google and Tyranny of Good Design”.
Shaughnessy makes several of the same points as I did regarding Google’s rather glaring institutional disregard for graphic design, and just how out of the ordinary that is for a company of their size and stature. After dissecting Google’s “corny” logo and un-graphic-designed home page, Shaughnessy writes:
And yet, I think there’s something magnificent about Google’s lack of design. There’s something defiant, almost obtuse about its reluctance to indulge in the sort of oleaginous branding and design that is now the corporate norm. We’ve reached a point, in the homogenized West, where good graphic design is everywhere. The battle has been won: every business knows it needs good design – you don’t have to tell them anymore. It’s enshrined in the business schools, established in the corporate HQs. Even small businesses understand that good design is good for business. It’s a universal truth, like “customer service” and “value for money,” and all the other boardroom nostrums that drive modern commerce.
But the consequence of all this feel-good business is that design has become, more often than not, a badge of mediocrity. The old Modernist dream of good design standing for rationality and human values has been flipped. Today, good design is little more than a cosmetic agent, an obscuring agent.
These are insightful observations. And, perhaps, this suspicion that good graphic design is an “obscuring agent” explains why so many people react so vicerally when Google’s design is criticized.
Commenting is closed for this article.
Perhaps using the word “decoration” should be encouraged more, so as to distinguish between designs that are thoughtful but which lack a certain jazziness (like del.icio.us or anything from Google) and those that are just as thoughtful but also look pretty (like those from Apple).
For example(s): I think that del.icio.us, Gmail, Joyent’s Connector and Strongspace and 37signals’s Campfire are all very well-designed web apps—the differentiating factor between them is the decoration. Campfire is really elegant, but it is definitely not as elaborately decorated as Joyent Connector. Gmail and the redesigned Yahoo Mail are about even in terms of functional utility, but Yahoo Mail certainly looks juicier.
— David Demaree 1022 days ago #The legions of newly named ‘Graphic Decorators’ are going to love their new job title!
Google’s minimalist approach was a breath of fresh air when it first came on the screens. It is user-friendly, for the most part, but could perhaps be revamped rather than re-logoed for each holiday. Maybe they just don’t want to fix what ain’t broke?
— Boogenstein 1022 days ago #I’m sorry but these discussions of design vs. decoration drive me up the wall. You only really see this particular debate in the field of web design, and I wonder if it’s because many of the designers are new and/or self-taught (sorta).
Design is a term that has been pimp-slapped until it’s lost all meaning. But it used to have a very clear one, and it wasn’t ‘decoration’. To design is to solve a problem. That’s the fundamental purpose of design. Anything else and you’re a stylist, or an artist or a Zamboni driver, but you ain’t no designer..
The good news is when something is well designed, in that it solves all the challenges facing it and meets its objectives, it looks great too. It’s amazing but true. Everything a good designer chooses has meaning, the fonts send a message, as do the colours. A designer who can’t tell you why they made a particular choice, didn’t make a choice at all. If they have no reason, then it’s just their taste vs. whoever. That’s not design. Anyone who thinks a company as advanced as Google is unaware of this is being naive.
In short, I would argue that in good design, there is no balance between functionality and decoration. One begats the other.
Sorry for the uber post.
— Kurt Krumme 1022 days ago #I think it gives Google a little too much credit to say they leave well enough alone. There are some genuine design mistakes at play on their sites. Look at their color-coding scheme, both in GMail and on the News page, in which bright colors are supposed to indicate to users which section they are in (World news = yellow, US news = purle, etc.). That’s a Bad Design Decision. The designers might explain exactly why they added those garish colors, but they’d be wrong. Nobody actually uses those colors to orient themselves – this isn’t the subway.
So Kurt’s right – a designer should be able to defend every decision. But there are plenty of design decisions that can be explained, but are still wrong. Best example: “I put sunglasses on the dog because that makes him cool.”
— Matt 1021 days ago #Shaughnessy seems to be massively overstating the point. Anyone with an eye who’s seen both England and the US could hardly claim that good design is everywhere. Saying that bad design is everywhere in the US is a far more defensible claim.
— Aaron Swartz 1021 days ago #Another note on Google in particular. It’s clearly not that they don’t have people with graphical talent. Their print work and signage and the architecture of their HQ is astoundingly good. But I suspect they keep these people in the buildings across the street, away from the Web teams and let their programmers do the “design”.
— Aaron Swartz 1021 days ago #Google’s products are very very well designed, and their attention to detail almost borders on ridiculous (just look at the incremental minute refinements of the GMail interface). Design is not the same thing as decoration, or flare, and it certainly is not in the hands of their programmers.
— Tomas Jogin 1021 days ago #I don’t see how anyone can say Google does good design after looking at (e.g.) Google Earth for the Mac. Aesthetics (or “flair,” which I suspect the previous commenter meant) is one thing—and Google is, very obviously, not good at aesthetics—but their usability decisions are not always great either. Their focus on extreme simplicity results in good interfaces some of the time, and messes other times; and I agree, it looks like the reason for this is that the programmers are being left in charge of usability.
— anonymous 1020 days ago #Google’s design is design. The “lack of decoration” as you called it is what it is for a very good reason. Google’s pages load fast, and perfectly on every browser. Google’s pages are very easy to read, and the links are easy to find. With gmail, they have proven mastery over complex user interfaces, and invented “ajax”. Even with almost unlimited “cash for design” at their disposal, they decided a simple, clean interface was best. I happen to agree.
— Jim 1020 days ago #Simple and clean if you don’t have visual disabilities, anyway. The apparent visual elegance of Google’s applications usually hides unforgivable accessibility nightmares.
— Nick Caldwell 1020 days ago #