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Comment by Ninroot | Hacker News Reader

Design is a broad topic. This post won’t approach the adjective qualifying a style with simple forms and a pure appearance. No. Design is broader than a sleek car or an harmonious living room.

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Isn’t design more about usability/practicality than aesthetics?

Do they have to be mutually exclusive? The goal of design should be to solve a problem as elegantly as possible given the parameters of the problem and the tools/materials available. There is no reason a solution to a problem cannot be both practical and aesthetically pleasing.

In my opinion, I don’t think they should. The way I see it however is that if an object’s design is calculated in percentages: utility/practical/functionality should represent 80% of it, and aesthetics the remaining 20% (tngt: pareto’s law)

I think it's about both. A solution that solves a problem while also being aesthetically pleasing is better than one which only solves the problem.

That is a point of contention between different schools of thought. Industrialization, mechanical reproduction (manufacture) of objects, and corresponding jump in scale of production went hand in hand with emergence of "form follows function" as a principle of design for "Modern" design.

Now a quiz:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/33._Witt...

Is that door by mr. uber rational Wittgenstein a specimen of form follows function, or do you note 'aesthetics' saying gutten tag there?

In my view, I would say the former.

Mostly agree, and no doubt that was the intent of LW: it is shorn of non-functional ornaments, but I propose that aesthetic choice determined the form of that door handle. Various forms would have worked.

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