Design Darwinism

Got to thinking about good design today. More people seem to be concerned with the design of mediated information-transfer interfaces (MITIFs -- you know, books, newspapers, magazines, web sites, etc.) than ever before. Note earlier post re the arguments among various UX, UI, ID, etc., MITIFers. People are coalescing into one feisty camp or another to champion their own view of design -- hey, why not, we are knee deep in the postmodern world....

Anyway, surfing through web site after web site and perusing the many books (my favorite MITIF) on my shelves about the visual and information, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe design isn't all that important after all. If it were, wouldn't the good be driving out the bad? Wouldn't design Darwinism dictate that the strong survive?

Every day I am surrounded by bad typography, bad layouts, bad color choices and so on, ad nauseum. If good design is so important, why isn't it winning?

In my particular field of newspaper design, most of the 9,000 or so papers strive to be merely competent. Some are simply ugly. Granted, newspaper readership is on the decline, but we can hardly lay that at the feet of design. If the "user experience" is so damn critical, why are the MITIFers the only ones seemingly concerned?

I have heard readers in focus groups complain if the body type is too small, but that's the only issue outside of content I have ever heard. Not once has anyone said, "I am getting damn sick and tired of Franklin Gothic Demi-bold!"

Are we guilty of the "hammer syndrome?" (If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem becomes a nail.) Is design our hammer?