Lessons
Why Design Matters
05:50 2Design Vs. Aesthetic
06:27 3Impact Of Design
07:01 4The Design Process: Understand Your Audience
09:17 5The Design Process: Understand Your Content
05:21 6Design Principle: Alignment, Grids, And Spacing
05:47 7Design Principles: Contrast
02:55 8Design Principles: Repetition
03:20Design Principle: Hierarchy & Proximity
05:37 10Principle Scale And Balance
02:48 11Design Principles: Typography
04:29 12Design Principles: White Space
01:11 13Design Principles: Color
06:09 14Design Principles: Graphics, Icons, And Photos
02:51 15Design Principles: Layouts And Focal Points
01:53 16Design Principles: Color-Blind Accessibility In Design
01:41Lesson Info
Design Vs. Aesthetic
I want to talk about the difference between design and aesthetic because there is a big difference and I have some examples that I think will be very helpful for you to understand the difference. So design is really about how it functions. Aesthetic is about out how it looks. More specifically we can think about it like this, so design or function is on the left, we've got a pot of boiling water, we just need to boil water. Aesthetic is on the right. It can still boil water but it looks cooler. It's going to look nicer on our counter. Different types of kettles will apply to different people and if you think of it this way we have so many different versions of aesthetic here and instantly you are probably gravitating towards one or two of these different kettles and that's the example of aesthetic. So functional is about design. It's about can it do the job of boiling water. Aesthetic is which one is appealing to me, which one connects with me personally, which one is going to connect ...
with my decor? Which one are you going to choose when you go to Amazon and do a search there's 2000 kettles to choose from. That's the impact of aesthetic. But aesthetic is tricky because a lot of times we've been tricked into buying things because of aesthetic. Chances are, you've probably bought something online that maybe you weren't intending to buy or you bought the more expensive version 'cause you fell for the aesthetic and the unfortunate thing is that sometimes aesthetics don't always perform the function that we hope it was going to perform. So good design is more than what it looks like. And if something is aesthetically pleasing but doesn't fulfill the function we need it to fulfill, then to me it's useless. Those packing cubes that I am now returning when I get home, they're useless to me and we do judge things based on aesthetics. You know, when you're a child you're taught not to judge the book by its cover. That's good for children, but let's face it. We judge everything by the cover. It's the world we live in. We live in such a visual world, especially with the influence of technology and social media and just being given visual information so much and such high quality visual information too, not all the time, but it's been so easy thanks to filters and things like that to give us this heightened appeal towards really visual stuff. So there is this term called aesthetic usability and I come from the world of user experience design which means basically we try and make things very easy to use. If you're checking out of a website, if you're booking a hotel, we want you to do that very quickly and very easily without confusion. So Nielsen Norman Group is kind of a leader in my industry and I was reading about this concept of aesthetic usability and it says, "Aesthetic usability effect "refers to the user's tendency "to perceive attractive products as more usable." And I don't know if you are a Mac person or a PC person, and I'm not here to judge you based on that, but traditionally, if you think of Macs you kind of think, "Oh they're easier to use," or maybe 15 years ago or something. PC's kind of had the perception of more complicated and if you go into Google Images and search for things like Microsoft Word interface you'll get some images where there's like 17 rows of menu items, choosing fonts and things like that. So aesthetic usability impacting people's perceived usability of a product depending on how attractive it is. And it goes on to say, "People tend to believe things "that look better will work better, "even if they actually aren't easier." So I wanted to go through a couple of examples that maybe could relate to your business, or at least they're simple enough that you will understand this in action. So this is an example of a marketing calendar for a fake company, it doesn't matter what company it is, but marketing calendar. What is kind of the content on a marketing calendar? Well, we have a bunch of dates, days of the week, what are we going to talk about, we have the topics, the status, is it scheduled or not, budget for ads, maybe goal questions or notes, links, all these things. So when you look at this spreadsheet, think to yourself, what are some words that come to mind if you were just to receive this spreadsheet? I don't know if anyone has some words they wanna throw out here, gut reactions? Too much to look at. Okay, too much to look at. No hierarchy. No hierarchy. It's a lot. It is a lot. And so now let's look at this one really quickly. What are some words that just jump into your head concerning this one? It's cleaner, more standard. Okay. So just our initial gut reaction between the two we've only looked at each of them for maybe 15 seconds or something like that but notice you had a gut reaction to it and if you had just received this in your Inbox from a colleague or something immediately you would've either continued looking at it and followed up with whatever they wanted you to do with it, or you probably would've thought, "Ugh, that looks like a lot of work. "I will do that later," and so it can really impact what you think and what you think will impact what you do with it. So regardless of what you design, you really do have the power to influence what people are thinking and what people are doing.
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