enfineitzstil

This illustration communicates "health information technology". To demonstrate my point, the wood background, flower patterns, and pink colors are the forms which support the function. The function is still clear. This is an in-production illustration I am working on for a client, and I am sure it will resolve in a much more "functional" and sterile, mediocre form when the feedback loop is closed. Stay tuned. If it ends up in my portfolio, then things went well.

The scholarly adage “form follows function” rings true, and is often the source of much animosity by designers such as myself. Yet it must be followed to maintain professional conduct in this discipline.

However, recently I’ve come to see this in a more positive light.

Once the function of a design is established, the form can be added to garnish it. When working on a client project, be it print editorial, illustration, web design, Flash animation or motion, the sooner the function is created, the sooner the design can be shaped around it. This gives a generous margin of creative freedom, taking substance with the knowledge base of critical thinking and design academics.

Take the example of a hotel lobby: A space where visitors check in for accommodation and perhaps meet with prearranged social connections. A guest’s experience will be vastly different based on the hotel proprietor’s value of design. If the proprietor does not value design, the hotel could perhaps be very spartan and only functional. There could be a lobby and a check-in counter, and elevator perhaps, some mediocre signage. Likely the same person whose lack of value of design has carried over the spartan non-theme to the guestrooms as well. This would leave most guests with a sterile and not very comfortable feeling.

Imagine by contrast a hotel lobby with smart, stylish and expressive interior design harmonized with a theme, to present the function of the room. Imagine also this theme being carried throughout, into the guestrooms as well. This would give the guest a much more positive feeling, perhaps even a sense of being treated like someone very special, or receiving a treat.

I recently had a client who felt that every component of a design needed to have function. They would look at the smallest detail in an illustration or photograph used in a layout and ask me to explain what it represented. This would usually put me in a difficult position, having to fullfil unrealistic expectations.

If the function has already been established, the form is only there to garnish it. But the garnish doesn’t need to carry the same responsibility as the function of the form. In the same way, going back to the hotel model, the wallpaper used on the wall in the lobby doesn’t need to remind guests that they are in a hospitality facility. Imagine if the proprietor told the interior designer that the wallpaper needed to show something which clearly indicated hospitality. Do they even make wallpaper with patterns of beds and showers? That is ridiculous, because the function of the lobby has already been established.