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Oddly enough, beauty is something that everybody knows, but only a few understand. Why is this?
In one way, it isn’t complicated. We know beauty when we see it. But at the same time, it’s not that simple either.
It’s in our Nature:
We are literally surrounded by Beauty in the natural world. Beauty is wherever you look! An orchid is beautiful. A hummingbird is beautiful. A geode rock is beautiful. The eagle nebula, the mountains, the coral reefs – they’re all teeming with natural beauty. We’ve inherently evolved and been trained to understand the myriad ways our world operates via the constructs of visual appearance.
When we turn our gaze on the man-made world full of objects, we have no other option than to look through the lens of our perpetually reinforced “reptilian brain” models. These mental models are already set in our brains to decipher what is “beautiful” and what it is not.
Beauty in the Larger Context:
E=mc², the simplest equation, albeit one of the most profound, is stupendously beautiful to every physicist in the world. The compositions of Mozart are beautiful. The elegance of Mohammad Ali’s boxing technique and movements are beautiful. The first photo of Earth taken from the moon during the Apollo mission is magnificently beautiful. A 12thcentury hand forged samurai nagamaki sword, as functional as it can be, just happens to be remarkably beautiful! Even the Lockheed SR-71 blackbird, still arguably the fastest aircraft and designed “only” for absolute function and hyper efficiency, resulted in one of the most aesthetically beautiful aircraft man has ever made – as sexy and as sculptural as any fine artist would have masterfully crafted.
There is no absolute beauty. Beauty is always defined by its context and by its intended users. You don’t judge a chair to be beautiful just by looking at a 2D sketch. You will ultimately have to sit in a 3D prototype of that 2D diagram and see how your body feels in the chair to decide how beautiful it is!
The real beauty in an object is derived from the real world ecosystem in which the product is used (or misused).
Aesthetics DO matter:
As Dieter Rams said “Aesthetic quality of a product is an integral part of its utility”. It instantly clarifies the structure of the product architecture and makes it more understandable. It helps you relate it to your mental models. It tells you which is the working end, where to hold it, where not to touch, how to lift it, its hierarchy of use, what to do first etc.…
Aesthetics are paramount to how the final design will be perceived. It helps us understand how the product’s functional and emotional attributes will deliver the expected benefits for the ideal user experience and consumption.
It’s the primary reason people are going to choose your product over the competition.
Mr. Ferar, one of the founding partners of SF said in 1959 “Design is the articulation of quality – Unfortunately if your product is good – but doesn’t look good – most shoppers will pass it by”.
Its counter-Intuitive:
For the end user, beauty in a product begins with form and ends in function. But in the industrial design studio, it starts with function and ends in form. Fundamentally Industrial Design starts with usefulness, usability, ergonomics, and then aesthetics – blended in that order.
In this webinar we’ll explore how all these elements come together to create “beauty” in a product and how this will set it apart for success in the market.
We’re calling YOU – all you lovers of beauty – to join us at lunchtime on Wednesday, August 28th, from 12-1pm EDT. Whether you’re asking yourself, “how the heck am I supposed to apply beauty to my work?”, or you’re all about employing both functional and emotional beauty in your entire product development process, this webinar is for you!