Mirificam Press

Video Series (Part 4): What is Good Design?

October 7th, 2009 in Web Design Worldview

by: Matthew Griffin

Part one, part two, and part three of this series have built a foundation for understanding design and its purpose. In this fourth part of the series that foundation will be used to answer this question: what is good design?

Mirificam Press Video Series (part 4): What is Good Design? from Matthew Griffin on Vimeo.

III. What is "Good" Design?

    A. Separating Good into Moral and Excellent

        1. What is "good" design or "good" art?

(III-A-1_001_good) What is "good" design or "good" art? There has been a lot of confusion surrounding this question throughout the centuries, especially as the motivating factors in design and art have mutated and realigned.  It's not so easy to get a consensus on what constitutes good design or even beautiful design.  (III-A-1_002e_ex) This last example here is the piece we looked at earlier from Ducamp. Is this good design? How about these? (III-A-1_002_ex a-g) Could we call these "Christian" art?

        2. The Moral Struggle

Every designer has a struggle going on inside when they see these images—it's a moral struggle. Because these objects are created by moral beings and used by moral being, we can't easily separate the moral content imposed on them from the form of the designs themselves. And that fact has led to two erroneous approaches to design and art in the Christian community in recent years.(III-A-2_001_moral) The first approach is to judge creative works by their moral content alone. And this approach has fostered a kitschy Christian creative sub-culture. Because as long as a creative work has explicitly Christian content, it's deemed "good". This approach is especially influential in modern evangelical circles. But remember in our previous talk we discussed the concept that God has commanded us to imitate him, not only morally, but structurally as well. We can't ignore technical excellence.

(III-A-2_002_technical) The second erroneous approach is to judge creative works only by their technical merit, completely divorcing the work from its moral content. This is also a dangerous approach because, obviously, it open us up to wholesale consuming immoral and untruthful material. Again, God has commanded us to imitate him both morally and structurally.

        3. How should we approach design and art?

So how should we approach design and art? Well, if we're going to relentlessly apply a Christian worldview to our intake, our approach to creative works isn't going to be easy. We have to be able to analyze both technical and moral content and make a distinction between the two. This means we can neither escape broader culture and the creative work it produces, nor can we allow ourselves to consume it's rhetoric uncritically. It's a much more difficult row to hoe than the two approaches we discussed first. It requires diligence and study.

Now, we're going to look at technical excellence and the Christian aesthetic in that arena. We'll save the moral aspect of design for our talk about morality and ethics in design later on.

    B. Technical Merit and Effectiveness

        1. The Factors of Technical Merit

When we talk about technical merit, quite a few factors come into play. There are preliminary or "stage setting" criteria such as (III-B-1_001_stage) the accepted standards of the industry, the uniqueness of a work (obviously, we don't consider plagiarism good design), there's the rational intent of the work (does the project make sense?), and and we could also add to this list issues of context and culture. Now, these are all changing and evolving criteria. They're factors we take into consideration when we analyze a work from our own generation and when we analyze a work from a previous generation. For example, when we look at a piece of graphic design work from the Gutenberg era such as this (III-B-1_002_robert) design piece from Robert Estienne in the 15th century, we take into consideration the tools available to him along with acceptable standards of practice for his time. So in this way we find that sometimes a piece that might be considered average by today's standards is actually a masterpiece in its own context.

        2. The Time Transcendent Qualities

Then we get to the more time transcendent factors. Now we're back to the old debate of function or form. Remember back at the very beginning of the series, we talked about the definition of design. (III-B-2_001_functionform) And I showed how, in the Christian worldview, function vs. form is actually a false antithesis. And this is because, in the Christian worldview, the very foundation of reality is a God who is both (III-B-2_002_trinity) unified (one) and is also diverse (three). So we have this model, this pattern, a real reason to say that both function and form may coexist 100% in the same object without contradicting each other. And the main reason the function vs. form debate has burned so hot in the recent years is a lack of an adequate origin in design philosophy to account for a reality where function and form are both legitimate goals.

And this is very important when we approach a design work to analyze its technical merit. Because if function is all we care about, then it doesn't matter how the work looks or feels, only that it is effective. On the other hand if form is all that matters, then it doesn't matter whether or not the work does anything, only that it looks and feels good subjectively. So how do we take the Christian understanding of function and form and apply it to our analyzing of a creative work?

    C. The Christian Aim of Paradox

        1. The Christian Aesthetic

The answer to this question is at the heart of the Christian aesthetic—our understanding of beauty. And here it is: (II-C-1_001_paradox) The goal for the Christian in design should not be function or form or even a balance of the two; it should be paradox. Our aim is for a creative work that satisfies both function and form without sacrificing either. Again, the object is not balance as in the Aristotelian system. (III-C-1_002_paradox) This is a common mistake of the Christian to strive for balance rather than paradox. But let's think about the Biblical model. We are to love life like no other people (in fact, throughout history and various cultures Christians have stood out as having a high view of the sanctity of life), and yet we are to be ready to lay our own life down as if it were nothing. Paradox. We are to be the humblest of people recognizing our own brokenness, yet we are to be passionate in our conviction of truth and justice. Paradox. This is Christian beauty. This is our aesthetic. It's a pattern, a model that points back to our creator and it allows for full, complex, robust creative work.

Now, let's look back (III-C-1_003_paradox) at the illustration of planning, building, and maintaining. We already talked briefly about the paradox of the overlapping rolls of the planner, builder, and maintainer. They are distinct roles and yet the agent who effectively carries out each role may be the same. So we see that kind of Trinitarian model already dictating the larger process. But now I'm going to add another layer so we can see how the Trinitarian model cascades down through the creative process. In the first two steps (planning and building) we can see function and form (III-C-1_004_paradox) coexisting and overlapping and finding their existence in the created object. This is a profound concept that's vital to our understanding, not only of design and art, but of existence in general. And it's amazing that this doctrine that the Christian church has struggled so hard to explain over the years, is the very doctrine whose essence we experience so intimately in day to day life. It's everywhere we go, everywhere we look. It's in the family, the community, the creation. It may be supra-rational but it's absolutely how we experience reality. And that's something not lost on Christian philosophers. In He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Francis Schaefer said that (III-C-1_004_paradox) "I would still be an agnostic if there was no Trinity, because there would be no answers."

        2. Self Expression

Getting back to the Christian aesthetic of paradox, it's important because of our culture to note here that personal expression is not part of the Christian aesthetic in the area of technical merit. A creative work is not good simply because it expresses the feelings of an artist. Personal expression has become the aesthetic measuring rod of the fine art community and in many cases, the design community. (Video of flip through art book) And if you pick up any art history book and quickly flip through from beginning to end, you will quickly see the result. The quality of the work goes down as the value of personal expression goes up. Because the focus has shifted from the art to the artist. Or from the design to the designer. Again, I'll ask "is this good art?" (III-A-1_002e_ex) If personal expression is the ultimate end, then the answer is yes. Ducamp expressed himself here profoundly. But for the Christian, self-expression is a wonderful benefit of the creative process, not its ultimate end. We express truth with our work, and as we conform ourselves to truth, we will find that our work more and more becomes self-expression.

And that leads us to our next topic. How do we deal with morality in design?

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