From the course: How Design Makes Us Think

Design and response

From the course: How Design Makes Us Think

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Design and response

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- We're surrounded by design. Every part of the man-made world is designed. Graphic design, industrial design, environmental design, fashion architecture, and so many other practices create our world. Often we stop seeing design, take it for granted, and it fades into the background like telephone poles. But once in a while, I come across an incredible title sequence, see an amazing poster, or bad type on a sign. And there it is again. And the good stuff stays with me. Our job as designers is to use the right forms, images, typography, words, and materials to create that response. Recognizing the designers' power to create an emotional response and desire is critical to modern life. As designers, it allows us to be more purposeful and aware of the formal choices we make, and our inherent responsibility to do good. For non-designers, the recognition of design and its impact opens the door to a new way of seeing. One may feel moved to tears after seeing the television dog food commercial of a boy reunited with his best friend, a dog. But once we understand why we are moved, we see our emotional connection to the characters and symbols we already know from stories and books, like "Tom Sawyer" or "Old Yeller." There are so many possible emotional and intellectual responses to a given design that it's hard to disentangle them. At one point, I considered exploring how design makes us feel, but the feeling alone doesn't express the rational and intellectual processes we use when we respond to a solution. The smooth forms of a new office chair feel good, emotionally. It projects an aura of power, and tells others that we value design, but we're also aware intellectually that it will be easy to operate, and not require frequent repair. Marketers and designers are aware that their audience is assaulted by millions of messages daily, and that most people today don't trust many of these messages. To be heard, understood, and remembered, the designer must first get the audience's attention, and then engage the viewer to spend time with a solution, or engage with the object. A design must walk the fine line of being easy to use or understand, and complex enough to require more attention. And finally, the audience, viewer, or user needs to leave the experience with a positive feeling about the product or design. Recognizing precisely what reaction we want to create and how to reach that requires more than an intuitive sense of something feeling happy or sad. Keep in mind, I'm a designer, not a neurologist, psychologist, or sociologist. So from a designer's perspective, let's delve into the sociological, psychological, and historical reasons for our responses, so what visual and conceptual cues resonate, and why.

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