The Secret To "Great" Design Is Simpler Than You Think

Summary

The transcript covers a lively discussion between a design professor and students on what separates good designers from great designers. Themes touched on include pushing creative boundaries and expanding skills into other realms to gain fresh perspectives to channel back into design work. There is debate around mastering fundamentals versus diversifying, with the professor advocating for starting by truly mastering a craft before broadening. Tips are provided for gaining clarity from clients with vague briefs. Overall there is emphasis on defining clear criteria for evaluating design qualities like elegance and principles like contrast.

Takeaways

• 😀 There is nobility in doing humble things well. Mastery comes before expanding your skills.
• 👍 Clarify design principles like contrast so students can make decisions without the teacher present.
• 💡 Use sliders and scales to define vague concepts like good vs bad design.
• 🗣 Don't be afraid to ask clients lots of questions upfront to get clarity.
• 😥 Young people feel pressure today from false online narratives about success.
• 🔍 Achieving excellence means focusing on quality over quantity.
• 🤔 It's easier to define bad design versus great design.
• 🎓 A great designer transcends just designing by expanding their skills over time.
• ❓ Intentionally try to disprove your ideas to strengthen them.
• 👩‍🏫 Provide students clear criteria to critique their own work.

Q & A

What is the main topic the speakers are discussing in the transcript?

The main topic is what separates good designers from great designers. The speakers discuss traits of good and bad design, achieving excellence through mastery, avoiding false narratives of success, articulating design principles clearly, getting clarity from clients on project briefs, and focusing on fundamentals.

What does Chris P. recommend as a way to achieve excellence?

Chris P. recommends focusing on mastery by putting in 10 or 20 thousand hours into a craft before expanding into other areas. He advocates doing less but doing it better.

What does Chris P. say about people who have a lot of online success at a young age?

He says that probably unscientifically 90% of those people are scammers and it's just a matter of time before they get arrested. He says their success feeds a false narrative that seeps into people's subconscious and contributes to high rates of depression and anxiety.

What system does Chris P. recommend using when a client brief is too broad?

He recommends staying in the 'pocket of discomfort' for long enough to get clarity by asking lots of questions even if it annoys the client. He says to promise the client it's to ensure clear understanding of the problem and what they want before moving forward.

What advice did Dr. Samuel Holtzman give Chris about being a good teacher?

He said good teaching means your students can make similar decisions to you when evaluating work without you being there. He recommended identifying 5 things to look for in a design and having students critique work by going through those 5 things.

What does Chris say is the danger of not getting clarity from clients on what they want?

He says it's dangerous to walk away and make assumptions about broad terms like "make it epic" or "make it clean and modern." Even if we think we know what those mean, it's important to get specifics from the client.

What is an example Chris gives of humble tasks done well?

He talks about a video series showcasing people who do mundane things very skillfully, like folding pizza boxes or throwing dough. He says this manifests the Japanese concept of taking pride in doing humble tasks well.

What does Chris recommend as a way to determine if a design is good or bad?

He recommends identifying specific design principles like contrast and mapping them on a scale from bad to good. Seeing clearly where a design falls on spectrums for key principles can help evaluate if it is bad or good.

What does Chris say about people focused solely on mastering one craft or skill?

He does not look down on people who put in their 10-20,000 hours mastering just one thing. He thinks there is nobility and beauty in focusing on doing humble things very well before expanding to other areas.

Why does Chris think depression rates are high among young people today?

He believes the false narratives promoted online about extreme early success contribute to anxiety and depression. Young people feel they can't achieve unrealistic levels of success in short timeframes.

Outlines

00:00

😅 Defining good versus great design

The first paragraph discusses how to define good versus great design. It talks about whether great designers need to do more than just design, with perspectives from different people. The discussion centers around how difficult it is to objectively define great design on a spectrum, but it's easier to distinguish bad design from great design. There is emphasis on mastering fundamentals before expanding horizons.

05:01

👍🏻 Strategies for critiquing and teaching design

The second paragraph provides tips on critiquing design work and teaching design principles. It suggests having a defined list of criteria to evaluate work against, so students can internalize those principles and make good judgments independently. Asking clarifying questions to clients is also encouraged, rather than making assumptions, to deeply understand problems and desired outcomes.

Keywords

💡design principles

The fundamental concepts and guidelines that designers use to create effective, functional designs. The script mentions 'contrast' as an example principle that when used properly, leads to good design.

💡elegance

The quality of being tastefully fine or luxurious in appearance, behavior, or style. The speaker uses this as an example of a term he has used without properly defining for students.

💡critique

Careful analysis and evaluation of something, especially a literary, philosophical, or political theory or idea. The speaker talks about effective critiquing requiring clear criteria that students can apply on their own.

💡clarity

The quality or state of being clear, in particular. The speaker advocates for designers asking clients clarifying questions upfront to understand project needs and goals.

💡fundamentals

The central, primary, or basic parts of something. The speaker urges practicing and mastering design fundamentals as a path to excellence.

💡false narrative

A story or explanation that is inaccurate or misleading. The speaker warns about unrealistic stories of extreme success fed to young people today.

💡anxiety

A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease. The speaker links false narratives to high rates of anxiety and depression.

💡gradient

A gradual change in something, or the process of making something change gradually. Used here to refer to a scale of measurement between extremes like good and bad design.

💡articulating

Expressing something clearly or vocally. Practicing articulating design fundamentals is said to provide clarity and decision-making ability.

💡contextualize

To put something into context; to describe the circumstances that give meaning to an event or idea. The speaker says critiques should evaluate student work within clear contextual criteria.

Highlights

What separates good designers from great designers

A great designer does more than design in addition to being a good designer

You have to transcend being a designer

Having the capacity or willingness to push yourself to failure in order to achieve success

I try to disprove ideas as soon as possible to practice critical thinking

There's nobility in doing humble things well

Try to master something first before moving on

Don't know what can be done in a certain time period because of false narratives

Focus on being good because it's really hard to be good

Bad to great design has a bigger contrast and is easier to identify

Use design principles as a base hit first

Don't be afraid to ask clients questions to get clarity

Critique work by going down a list of 5 key things to look for

Practice articulating fundamentals to make decisions faster

Stay in the discomfort zone until you get clarity from clients

Transcripts

what separates good designers from great

designers I'm curious first before I try

to figure out how to possibly answer

this question is what is your intention

by asking this question to kind of Step

Up the game for yourself if you want to

be an overachiever and do great things

does anybody have any clue on how to

answer a question like this maybe the

difference is that a great designer does

more than design in addition to being a

good designer okay this is going to get

real interesting I love where we're

going with this so you need to do more

than design so you have to transcend

being a designer okay Ming you have the

mic now I guess having the capacity or

willingness to push yourself to failure

in order to achieve whatever the success

that you're defining we as faculty we

have these discussions sometimes with

students how do you become better doing

creative strategies and things like that

can you step out of that that realm and

get into other things that you might be

interested in and expand upon that and

then some of those indirect insights can

actually Channel back in thank you Ming

as a practice a of critical thinking is

whenever I have an idea I try to

disprove the idea as soon as possible so

I'm going to try that with patrulla

statement so patrulla I would just ask

you do you know great designers that

only do design

yes okay so that would just disprove

that right there see how that works I'm

often misquoted on this that people

think that Chris you just poo poo and

you look down on people who just do a

thing that their masters at craft and I

do not think that at all I think this

world works better when there are people

who put in their 10 or 20 000 hours just

to master something there's actually a

series of videos and accounts online

that showcase people who do the most

mundane things really well are you

familiar with the pizza box guy he just

sits there and folds a thousand pizza

boxes at a time or the guy's a mix none

and he just throws it across or the six

guys who Hammer a spike into the ground

in perfect Unison in the book The

obstacles away there's a quote there in

Latin that I don't remember my son would

probably know it which says something to

the fact of there's nobility in doing

humble things well and I really believe

that and when I got to travel to Japan I

got to see that philosophy manifested in

the people there they take so much pride

and just making sure the table is clean

or to take out the trash or prepare a

piece of fish or whatever it is and I

think there's something really beautiful

about that so I think in our culture we

feel like we have to do more and more

and more I think the way to achieve

Excellence is to do less but to do

better I'm not saying that those of you

that have the capacity to do more should

not do more you don't totally should but

I think you should try to master

something first before you move on

there's a tendency in our culture

because we get to see examples online of

people who seem to have a lot of success

they have all the material social proof

and they're very young and it starts to

create this very unreal narrative about

what can be done in what period of time

and I promise you probably

unscientifically ninety percent of them

are scammed and it's just a matter of

time before they get arrested so it's

this kind of narrative that we get fed

into our brain that seeps into our

subconscious and why there's such a high

rate of depression amongst young people

and why they're so anxious right now

that's one of the questions because

we're being fed a false narrative about

what can be done so I'm going to be a

proponent for you just focusing on being

good because it's freaking hard to be

good I think it's really hard to figure

out on a gradient on an objective level

that we can get 10 people room to even

agree what is great design it's very

hard to figure out what good design is

as it relates to what great design might

be but I think we can pretty much figure

out what is bad versus great that's

there's a much bigger contrast between

bad and great so I'm going to assume

Mimi that you know what bad design is

right but let's just say you don't know

what bad design is many years ago when I

was teaching here I had this really

amazing super smart Student's name is

Daniel and Daniel when I was talking

during my critique I said that design

isn't elegant it wasn't his work I was

just like that's not elegant and I kept

using that word over and over again and

and Daniel you know raises his hand he's

like uh Chris I know there's a really

obvious question and I'm kind of

embarrassed to ask you but

what is elegant

it's like um oh what is Elegance I don't

know I've been throwing around words

that I don't even Define and there's no

shared definition so I'm going to

present to you one way of looking at

information to help you get clarity so

let's try this with bad to good design

we don't even need to go great okay just

the difference between bad and good so

Mimi you said you know what bad design

is right yes okay what is a trait of bad

design so let's try to use something

much simpler something that's easy like

just let's get a base hit here and let's

not go for the Home Run just yet it's

not using or I guess not using the

design principles what are those design

principles that you speak of just give

me one contrast contrast what about

contrast is contrast good or bad uh in

general it's good all right so we'll

write contrast I mean everybody should

know this right I mean I agree you're

safe here on one side if you have lots

of contrast the more contrast the better

the less contrast not so good what we

want to do is we want to keep doing this

we want to find one parameter that we

think is good or bad and then we

contrast that so then we can say on some

kind of gradient scale like yeah there's

lots of contrast and we can talk about

how to achieve that contrast so those

are all things that designers here know

how to do and we can make a long list of

them and then we start to get a sense

like how we know if our design is good

or not Dr Samuel Holtzman he sat in my

class one time and I thought it was a

pretty good teacher until he told me

what he thought afterwards

and then I had to come to Jesus moment

and he said you know here's the thing

what does it mean to teach things it

means that your students can look at the

work and make similar decisions without

you being there that was so profoundly

different than the way I taught and the

way I've been taught those of you that

are old enough who've been here long

enough know pretty much how most

teachers here teach which is this is

wrong that's stupid you're terrible and

this is all right that's usually how it

is but then you walk away like I don't

know how you made any of those decisions

so Dr Holtzman told me when you're

looking at a piece of work what are the

five things you're looking for and break

those down and then write them down and

put it on the board and then ask your

students when they're looking at that

work to go down the list to critique it

themselves if they can make it down to

the bottom five while surviving the

gauntlet of five they got a shot of it

being pretty good so when wherever we

have run into problems like like this

that are kind of very nuanced and very

difficult to Define I find that using

some kind of slider like this helps out

a lot those of you who work with clients

who get really broad briefs where you

can't really tell what's what they want

I'm gonna tell you right now here's my

tip to you here's tip number one do not

walk away from a client afraid of asking

what it is that you need to know to do

your job stay in that pocket of

discomfort for long enough so you get

clarity my business coach who who passed

away last year he told me this before he

says tell him up front it's going to be

grueling that you're gonna ask lots of

questions and they're gonna get annoyed

and they're gonna feel like it's a waste

of time

but then to promise them that you don't

want to run off and do something without

clear understanding of what the problem

is and more importantly what it is that

they want they're like um

make it Epic

make it clean and modern

make it organic they use these words and

we think we know what that means but

it's dangerous to walk away and make

that assumption but if we can just work

on the fundamentals and keep executing

on the fundamentals and practicing

articulating that to others it will

further cement and clarify in her mind

which allow us to make the decisions

even faster

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