Design can be boring!

I saw the following tweet by Jon Hicks a little while ago

“Sometimes design can be boring, and thats OK!”

This reminded me of something that’s been bugging me for ages – Despite many people seeming to assume the opposite, when I call myself a designer, that doesn’t mean that I should also be considered to be an artist. Sure, we (myself and other designers) do share the label of visual communicators with artists, and we do also employ methods used by artists to visualise our thinking and our concepts, but, unlike artists, a good designer should be working on how to solve a client’s problem, instead of creating something that presents his/her own view of the world. Design is about having a set of constraints and being able to work within them. A good design can look pretty, but a great design makes sure it solves the problem first and foremost!

If you want proof of that, check out this post by the Daily Fail that labels the new Gov.uk site as boring.com despite it being (very deservedly) named the world’s best design of 2013!