Design is everywhere
Design is everywhere.
Design is everywhere. That’s not an exaggeration; it’s a fact. Everything you can see and touch has been designed—the chair you’re sitting on right now, your phone, the food in the fridge or your hairbrush or the car outside or even yourself (that’s right, humans were designed by nature). Design affects every single aspect of our lives: what we see and interact with every day. Design can make or break an experience—whether that experience is buying a product, eating in a restaurant or visiting a website. When design works well, it’s invisible: we don’t notice how something works because nothing seems out of place or confusing. But when the design fails, we notice immediately: things are slow to load, it takes too many steps to complete a task and buttons are hard to click (this is called ‘bad user experience’).
Design is a total experience.
When you think about design, odds are good that the first thing that comes to mind is the way something looks or feels. Indeed, these elements of design can be important—they certainly capture our attention quickly. For example: think about how your stomach drops when you see a new hole in your favourite shirt, or how good it feels to sink into a chair designed and made just for you.
But over time, we’ve come to learn that design is so much more than this. In fact, at Sami Kayyali we define design as any problem-solving process with human needs at its heart. In other words, if something doesn’t work well or make people happy, it may look great but it isn’t designed well.
Typography has character.
Typography is a communicative tool used by artists, designers and marketers to convey meaning. Some fonts have personalities that help us feel a particular way when we see them, such as calm or formal. They are also used to communicate the personality of a brand. The font Helvetica has enough character to communicate the emotion of an entire brand all on its own. It’s strong, it’s clean and it’s simple—and so is Apple which uses Helvetica as its main font.
It’s about the little details.
You might not think that the little stuff matters—you could even say you’re more of a “big picture” person. But you don’t need to be a type-A meticulous person for small details to make a difference. Even if you don’t consider yourself one for sweating the small stuff, remember that it’s not just about adding up dozens of minuscule changes—it’s about how all those little things work together. Sometimes, when all these details come together, they can create something much bigger than the sum of their parts.
That’s not to say that there isn’t an important role for people who sweat the small stuff and are masters at attending to detail, though—that’s where designers come in. If you’re looking for some help with the finer points of your project or idea, finding someone who can help you those details is key. And then when all those details come together? You get something big and beautiful and meaningful.
The moral of this story: sometimes it really is about the little things and with little things in mind we create some of the world’s best PowerPoint presentations