There are designs that are both good and bad, just as there are in almost everything. This is not a relative concept (its not at all about some individuals prefer it and others do not); there is undoubtedly a clear distinction between good and bad designs.
Now ,designs that are popularly tagged “bad design” may not be inherently dangerous. For instance, a simple Google search for “bad graphic design” yields a substantial number of examples. These designs are evidently poor, loudly and blatantly disregarding design principles. It is unlikely that we would venture into such territory, and so it is not something we should be overly worried about.
However, the concerning aspect arises when we remove the term “bad” from our previous search query and simply search for “graphic design.” This results in a significant number of unintentionally poor designs that are not labeled as bad. This is where a beginner in design can easily be misled. Let us delve deeper into this issue. Search “Brochure Design” on Google. Observe the results. The majority of them are either poor or boringly redundant. Why is this the case? When searching for “Brochure Design,” paid template websites that sell brochures prioritize their content in search results. They don’t care whether their content is good or bad; they add these keywords in their SEO strategies to enhance its visibility. That’s it. Check out the sources of these content, and you will get it.
Now, let us see why this is dangerous as I mentioned earlier. Now, let us see why this is dangerous as I mentioned earlier. This is forced exposure that goes into the naive Design Beginner. This forms their aesthetics and they starts relating to this- when the truth of good graphic design lies somewhere in curated sources which are not readily available for a layman.
The majority of the Good in the world are readily identifiable as such because the criteria that define anything as good are often established. We have clear definitions for GOOD. Be it good cinema, good music, good design, good students, and good teachers. However, there are no definitions for something that is bad. Typically, we resort to the theory of defining badness as the reverse of the definition of goodness. This approach is flawed. When we adopt this method, we will only notice the more ostentatious and intentionally BAD stuff. Consequently, many genuinely (dangerous) bads will remain undetected. Therefore, a potential solution lies in the definitions for bad things.
This is what we tried with our recent talk “How to make bad designs” (Available in this link).
P.S. Another thought that came up during our chat was this: if someone intentionally makes a bad design by ignoring all the rules—is that a bad design or a good design? Because the designer completely satisfied the design objective which was to make a bad design, which means it’s actually a good design, right?
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