Why we have bad design, Part 2

(continued)
Virginia Postrel, in her 2003 book The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetics Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness, said that we are living in an age of aesthetics. She said that, because of improvements made in mass production technologies and distribution, products could go beyond initial monotony in general look and feel to variety, from an emphasis on sameness and quick production to one of meeting various aesthetic tastes (good and bad).

Customers obviously wanted that. Product differentiation based on function and quality gave way to one based on aesthetics. As Postrel points out, this led to aesthetics taking on marginal economic value in our mass culture. For many, this meant that they would rather pay more, for instance, for a computer with a cool case than one with increased power or functionality. As Postrel put it, for a manufacturer, “adding pleasure may be more important than adding performance attributes.” So in our postmodern age, this has meant that everyone's personal idea of beauty is valid and it thus has value in the marketplace. There is no absolute standard of beauty. My idea of beauty is just as good as anyone's.

This increase of attention on aesthetics has given a fairly recent cultural focus on simply looking good. Postrel notes the increases in personal beauty enhancement products, day spas, nail salons, and so on. It has also meant that businesses give customers not just a handful of choices of some products, but hundreds, though not all of them truly attractive. It has meant that “designers” can give us 12-point, shadowed, underlined brown type on a deep purple background. (If it is on a web page, the type will blink next to 17 animated GIFs.) Postrel also insists that aesthetics should not be left to the professionals, thus implying that expert opinions are worthless and that everyone has the same level of expertise when it comes to separating the good from the bad. Give customers what they want, she says.

This is where we differ. Economically speaking, I think she is spot on. The best example I can think of is the iPod. A large part of its success lies not in its functional quality -- which many believe has not always been up to the level of its design or of the functionality of its competitors -- but in its aesthetics. iPods simply look cool, and the marketing pushes that angle, not how it works. There is no doubt that playing to a variety of consumer tastes makes good economic sense, but is it good for design and designers?

I think not. What has happened is a lot of bad design work has succeeded in the marketplace, even if it falls short of the standards of the professionally trained eye. This is where Design Darwinism has failed us. The Galapagos Islands finches survived through adaptation of the beak size and shape to the particular environment they were in. If your beak didn’t meet the “standard,” or the needs of the environment, you didn’t make it.

In today’s design world, the marketplace isn’t so cruel, the cultural environment not so unforgiving. A capitalist economic system allows anything that sells, and it doesn’t care if it is well-designed or not, as long as there are enough people who are willing to buy it. If bad design can find even a small corner of the market, which isn’t hard today largely because of the power of advertising and marketing over the minds of the great unwashed, it isn’t driven out by the good, as Design Darwinism would posit. It may even prosper. That’s why we are surrounded by not just the good designs, but the bad and the ugly.