Beyond Aesthetics: Are We Missing the Point of Design?

Taste, classism and how our focus on aesthetics is making design less effective.

Here’s an interesting conundrum: design has never been more accessible, more discussed, more commodified—and yet, good design still feels remarkably scarce (Don't believe me? Just go outside and look around). We’re immersed in a sea of visual and functional mediocrity, despite a collective acknowledgment that "good design" is superior, or rather preferable to “bad design”. Why is that? If we value aesthetics first, does that make it an inherently elitist pursuit—a skill reserved only for those with a specific educational background? Is good taste a misunderstood notion? Or, does everyone’s definition of design vary that greatly?

At this point of the discussion, I usually find that there's a foundational confusion here—one that I've explored before: design is often mistaken for art. As I've argued ad nauseam previously, designers aren't artists—their output can be considered art, but is not born as such. Art is about evoking feelings, challenging norms, and expressing the internal landscape of its creator. Design, conversely, is relentlessly functional, a practice bound by purpose and necessity.

As Aris Konstantinides, the Greek modernist architect, once wrote, good design means functional design—architecture (like design more broadly) demands practicality. Konstantinides argued you must be able to enjoy the room you’re in because it serves your needs. Art doesn't share that constraint; design lives by it.

Yet, if we are to pass judgment on design as a whole, let's first consider its aesthetic aspect. An "ugly" design can still achieve its intended purpose, even if its visual impact is contentious. Aesthetic judgments—what we consider good or bad taste—are deeply subjective, culturally conditioned, and inherently classist, as philosopher Pierre Bourdieu dissected in his seminal work, "Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste" (1979). Taste becomes exclusionary, accessible fully only to those with specific education or social backgrounds.

However, aesthetics might sometimes lie outside the functional scope of design. Designers often critique work based purely on visual preference, disregarding the success of its underlying purpose. But does this critique make such designs inherently bad? Is our pursuit of visually appealing design merely an effort to view the world through rose-tinted glasses, conforming to collective, perhaps elitist, aesthetics?

Commodification further complicates this dynamic. When design is reduced to transactional deliverables it risks divorcing from its function, prioritizing visual pleasure or conformity to trends over utility. The critical question here isn’t "Do I like this?" but rather "Does this work?". Effective design should be measured by usability, clarity, and impact—not subjective aesthetics alone.

So, if we all agree that good design is preferable, why is bad design so ubiquitous then? Reasons may include cost, scarcity of skilled designers, and the simplicity of approving safe, familiar, mediocre designs. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argued that creative ideas must navigate societal norms and gatekeepers to gain acceptance, making truly innovative designs risky. Hence, "bad" designs thrive because they’re easier to approve and more widely understood.

Yet functionality is rarely subjective. Design's value is inherently tied to its functionality. Aesthetics detached from practical function risk becoming empty, visually pleasing but meaningless vessels. Perhaps then, the camaraderie and consensus among design professionals—often overly critical of the aesthetics aspect alone—is another form of navel-gazing, inadvertently leaving the "hoi polloi" behind.

Indeed, this is a classic observation: design professionals are often caught in echo chambers where subjective aesthetic preferences are mistaken for objective truths. When design discourse becomes insulated, focused on impressing peers rather than serving users, it not only alienates the broader audience but also limits the scope of innovation. This self-referential loop reinforces standards that can feel arbitrary and exclusionary to outsiders.

What happens, though, if we've reached (or are fast approaching) a point where design is merely reflecting culture rather than genuinely shaping it? Historically, great design has often influenced societal norms and shaped the trajectory of culture, but the tide might be turning. With the proliferation of AI-generated visuals, social media aesthetics, and trends driven by algorithms rather than human intuition (think fast fashion, Instagramification, etc), we risk entering an "anything goes" era. Here, designs are tailored to immediate gratification, visually compelling but ultimately hollow, crafted primarily to impress the uninformed or "uninitiated."

This could lead to a paradoxical democratization of design—where everyone has access to aesthetically pleasing visuals—but at the cost of depth, originality, and genuine innovation. Such democratization might inadvertently lower collective standards, fostering an environment of superficiality and cultural stagnation. The challenge moving forward will be determining whether this democratization of design through technology and AI enriches or diminishes the discipline as a whole.

Ultimately, widespread "good design" remains elusive not because it's inherently elitist, but because we haven't collectively defined what good design truly means—and probably never really explained it well enough. The conversation is shifting beneath our feet, and it’s time to move away from superficial aesthetic debates toward clarity, usability, and meaningful impact (and probably keep our own personal taste out of it). The future of design depends less on refined taste and more on asking better questions.