“Taste and Design: the two words distinguish consumers from producers. We taste, they design. But designers also have taste in their own work, and what the Vaio Z’s designer doesn’t get is the difference between good taste and good design,” Rob Beschizza writes for Boing Boing. “Taste often describes flavors, appearances and forms; it blends into fashion, which spins as fast as people can spend their money. Even the classics shift as priorities change; something may be tasteful but irrelevant. Design, however, also concerns itself with function. If a design fails to encompass good taste, the result will be ugly. But if taste fails to encompass good design, it’ll be useless.”
“Talking about another Sony laptop that buries functionality under tasteful appearances and spec sheets, it’s not hard to see the point in all this. Together with the marketer’s remarks, however, this got me thinking about how little Apple cares about taste, a quality almost universally attributed to it,” Beschizza writes. “It will even embrace tastelessness in pursuit of what it regards as good design: if you assume otherwise, perhaps you’re forgetting about all that brushed metal, pleather and baize stretched over iOS. Some of its most heavily-marketed user-interfaces are almost as tasteful as those in games you can buy in jewel cases at Wal-Mart.”
“Unlike the menu system of 1001 Card Games, however, this is not to say they are badly designed,” Beschizza writes. “Bad taste can illustrate great art and design, even in the most mundane contexts. Cheesy textures, for example, can make an app’s function clearer in screenshots, without having harmed the functionality of the apps… Sony’s not alone in proving that good taste is no guarantee of good design. See Windows Phone 7, for example. It’s beautiful. It’s in excellent taste: minimalist, smoothly-animated, yet bold and experimental. But when we ask why something so well ‘designed’ is failing to catch on, we’ve already pulled the wool over our eyes.”
Beschizza writes, “Apple competitors are obsessed with copying Apple’s tastes without copying its central design habit, which is solving a problem and then refining the solution until the problem changes. And that’s the difference between the Vaio ultraportables and the Air: Apple stuck with Sony’s solution and refined it, whereas Sony threw it the trashcan in 2005, 2008, 2010, and (spoiler!) 2012.”
Much more, including photos, in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take:
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Daniel N.” for the heads up.]
So this mashup of words is supposed to clearly elucidate the subject of taste & design?
It is the most confusing set of words I’ve read in awhile.
Agreed.
Glad you said that. I was beginning to think it was massive dose of Bailey’s in my coffee.
I suppose I could have typed “the” between was and massive…
Convoluted @ best.
Attempting to actually whittle a meaning onto ‘taste’ is a futility all alone. De gustibus non est disputandum. Then again, the definition of ‘design’ is itself a battle. We might content ourselves that Apple, at least in the realm of corporate entities, enjoys both a philosophy and an appreciation for ‘design’ with a capital D, and is recognized for such.
WOW! This is the first time I have ever seen the De Gustabus phrase in a blog. Well done! 🙂
“Attempting to actually whittle a meaning onto ‘taste’ is a futility all alone.”
I am not sure this is what they are doing – if you take “a meaning” as being a definition.
I think the author is merely *discussing* the issues of taste and design. This is something well worth doing. In fact, discussion is actually antithetical to a definition, in that, by “talking around” a subject you are implicitly saying that any simple definition will never be adequate.
Actually, it makes plenty of sense to me. The problem is that the meanings are subtle with rather deep implications.
You might try reading it again slowly.
Also – listen carefully to Jobs. Understand what he means when he says “I don’t mean that in a small way. I mean it in a big way.”
Just kills me to watch videos of SJ now. So sad.
Agreed. I’ve tried to block out that Steve is gone and these vids are just a constant reminder.
Yes. I can’t quite get used to it. He was a friend I never met who made these great machines for me, and for the millions like me.
There will not be another Steve Jobs.
Less is more still holds true when it comes to design !
“simplify, simplify, simplify!”
Less is more still holds true when it comes to design !
“simplify, simplify, simplify!”
The article’s author could have used your advice.
Quote from the article: “It’s loaded with junkware, because paying two grand for a laptop doesn’t get you a system that hasn’t been sold to someone else.”
That is just one of the things I used to find terribly irritating about most Windows machines. I’m glad to have left that garbage behind.
Speaking of arbitrary crappy design has anyone seen the new Blackberry? Taking design queues from Battlestar Galactica.
What is he talking about? Clearly someone who actually knows nothing of design or taste. Worse still Sony has totally lost all grasp of taste in their newer laptops which is a great shame for the one pc company that used to get it. Or was that conclusion hidden in his strange and totally unrelated group of words, I get a clearer message from babelfish.
Well. Not the best written piece of work in the world, but he makes an important point – people convince themselves that Apple releases new designs to encourage sales, while in fact Apple changes it’s winning designs incrementally. That’s why I love 4s design, when a buch of people, even here, we’re moaning that it doesn’t look different enough.