In case you have not noticed, I got rid of Cufon based Chunky Five font that used to adorn the headlines with semantic <h1> on Inspiring Pixel today. While it looked very cool and pretty all the time it was there, it was breaking my thought process while reading and staring at the web page. We as designers of beautiful, shiny, creative websites often tend to fall for the dreaded imbalance of Design vs Style vs Creativity

The Basics

While for most of readers and amateur web designers style, creativity and design may appear to be same, the truth remains that they are all distinct though related entities in a designer’s creation. There are also designers who are strongly of the opinion that Creativity and Design are sides of the same coin. I would like to quote Andy Rutledge who explains the difference as:

Creativity is not design. Creativity has nothing to do with design. Creativity is bound by no laws, rules, or structures …which is perhaps why it’s so intoxicating (sometimes to the point of delusion). Design, on the other hand, is based entirely on math, psychology, human perception, and a host of rigid rules and laws that can be broken by only a highly skilled few. Those unfamiliar with these laws and rules, and the associated sciences are by no definition designers.

Andy is right about each and every word that he says but he is not complete. Design comes out of thought, experience and principles while Style is an idea captured in its fleeing moments. Design has reason while Style has none. At the same time to think of creativity as something random is very dyslexic on the part of the designer or a design student.

Creativity is the brilliance of a fleeing idea, which when applied to the usability aspects makes a great design. The same creativity when applied solely to visual richness of the design makes it not such a great design or may be even a poor design. – TK

Let us look more into the reason of Design and the lack of it in creativity through the thoughts of Kyle Meyer:

What makes great design great is not a trendy technique, but the logic and conceptual aspect that were figured out in the designer’s mind—or on more likely, on paper—before a mouse cursor ever opened Photoshop.

The Problem

Something that looks pretty might not be the a good design because it might leave the user confused or might tend to draw focus to the areas which need not even be looked at twice on a web page. When people say design is an art, I beg to differ. Design is not! Let’s see what Jeffrey Zeldman says about the topic:

Many young web designers view their craft the way I used to view pop culture. It’s cool or it’s crap. They mistake Style for Design, when the two things are not the same at all. Design communicates on every level. It tells you where you are, cues you to what you can do, and facilitates the doing. Style is tautological; it communicates stylishness. In visual terms, style is an aspect of design; in commercial terms, style can communicate brand attributes.

One of the worst practices emerging among today’s designers is to begin the design of a page by putting a background color and then drawing the elements as they proceed based on nothing but visual sensation. Often stylish and creative additions are made to balance the lack of useful content and design. Many elements are added because they are trendy or one of the leading designers of the period has done it in his latest work. Using of such style which is merely a replication of someone else’s design is not design and neither is it creativity. Indeed it is not only the designer to be blamed for the style over design crimes. Latest graphic design technologies are used to create content and then this content is evaluated using the best possible hardware. We live in a world where surface beauty speaks far more than intrinsic beauty and it is affecting the design industry. Whatever happened to the idea that a design must be user friendly and not just blow them out of their minds with its awesomeness.

As Zeldman reiterates that such a trend is not very healthy for the design industry. There is a vast groundwork that separates great designs from creative/stylish designs. As designers we ought to do more to bridge that gap than creating eye candy art.

I worry because young designers who confuse style with design are learning to copy their heroes’ technical tricks and stylistic flourishes, but not necessarily learning to communicate in this medium.

In an entire system which is based on the appraisal of visual aesthetics to define design, designer might often be under appreciated despite having created a brilliant design that may not have flying colors or bokeh effects.

“My God, it loaded so quickly and worked so well, even in IE3 on my Dad’s old Dell machine.” You know how awards show judges are always saying things like that? Neither do I.

After having read the entire article I am sure that the reader has been grasping enough to understand that Design, Style and Creativity are not three disjoint set that are mutually exclusive. Let me try to explain the perception of design and creativity for a designer with the following figure:

I hope the above explains what has been one of the most diabolical issues in design. To conclude in writing, there is a huge difference from the perspective of the user in terms design and style. For the designer they are the region of intersection of style or visually pleasing content and usability. Design is the management of constraints of visual aesthetics and usability with the use of logic and creativity. The intersection is met by the use of creativity and the result is a great design.