Caring About The Little Things

In one respect, design is the culmination of the careful consideration of many elements that together make a finished product and what makes really good design is paying attention to the fine details (including the unseen ones).

What makes really good design is paying attention to the fine details

On the surface this may seem nit-picky or obsessive, but in reality it all adds up to an end result that is extremely polished and professional.

Take another craft: woodworking. Raw wooden products quite often have rough edges and need to undergo some sort of iterative process to remove small imperfections before going on display and a well-experienced woodworker would pay attention to these imperfections and know to remove them with sand paper, before applying a veneer.

Now “veneer” is one of these terms you hear often in the design world, it is said that lot of people’s perception of design is that it is just veneer—that it’s purely an aesthetic layer on top of a product. This couldn’t be more wrong.

In well-executed design, what people percieve is the finished product. They don’t see the attention given to a product, the consideration of form and function. They don’t see what was removed or isn’t there nor how it was concieved or looked originally. They are simply unaware of the process, and therein lies the paradox of good design: it is both visible and extremely invisible and I would just like us to all be more aware of the process (in any field).

It would us all good to be more aware and to care about the little things.