What Does It Mean to Have a Design Style?
Beyond the buzzwords: what is design style, and what is its purpose in the design process?
The internet is saturated with information on how to follow different design styles and trends. But missing from most of this discussion is a more rigorous definition of design style, its uses and limitations throughout the design process, and how to approach consistency or variability in style for different design work and contexts. (I’ll primarily be focusing on communication design, with a slant towards technology and software interfaces.)
What is design style?
In a historical context, we often mean a visual style localized to a time, place, and purpose—Russian constructivism in the 1920's, grunge in the 90's. Many styles take the name of the time period (Victorian), aesthetic movement (Art Deco), or design philosophy (Swiss/International style) that spawned them. A style might also be associated with a certain subculture (e.g. urban street art’s spontaneous, constructed letterforms and frequent pop-culture references).
In a colloquial context, when we talk about a “design style” it’s usually through buzzwords. Grunge. Swiss. Minimalist. Skeuomorphic. Flat. These words are used to describe a whole set of visual conventions and commonalities. Grunge typography can be overlapping, chaotic,exuberant, and use 10 different typefaces on a single poster. This is in opposition to Swiss typography, which is legible, ordered, reserved, and stark in typography.
What does a design style encompass?
Superficially speaking, what we recognize as a “design style” is a set of particular colour harmonies, typefaces, compositional styles…But on a higher level, design styles usually carry with them certain principles of what the goals of design are, and techniques for how to accomplish those goals.
Some of these associations are borne out of clichés; others represent a very real part of the philosophy of that style. Skeuomorphism uses gradients and textures because employing physical metaphors is thought to make things clearer and more usable. Flat design is partly a reaction to skeuomorphic design, and employs flat planes of colour to clear away visual confusion and promote clarity.
Designers often characterize themselves by a fondness for certain styles and a repulsion to others; their work may clearly show a point of view through a consistent set of patterns and tropes.
Products may characterize themselves by having a consistent visual language—Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for iOS, for example, establish patterns for how menus should look and work, how buttons should be styled, and so on.
The purpose of style
So what’s the purpose of organizing ideas and patterns into distinct visual styles? This is by no means a comprehensive discussion, but I’ll present some reasons below:
Similar principles
When you borrow from certain design styles, it might be because the principles of that style agree with the principles of what you’re designing or how you design. For example—the Swiss International style prioritizes objectivity and readability, so the clean, neutral type might be appropriate for an international, corporate behemoth. Since the style grew out of similar design concerns or issues, the ways in which that style manifests may be the most effective for the situation.
Cultural references
You might also want to use a style to reference a certain time period and philosophy. Advertising that’s intended to produce nostalgia will often borrow design patterns from past decades. Doing this borrows from our collective culture and aesthetic literacy—whether consciously or subconsciously, we recognize certain visual devices as modern or old-fashioned. Political advertising will attempt to convey authority and reliability through a nationalistic colour scheme or certain icons and symbols; anarchist publications might will tap into a sense of rebellion with haphazard, grungy typesetting. Cosmetics companies that want to tout their eco-friendly, organic products will veer towards allusions to nature—in colour and type and imagery.
Specific styles may also be co-opted as a critique or parody of a particular message—themes from WWII-era propaganda posters being used in contemporary design criticizing current military actions or advocating for peace.
Uniformity of expression
Using a design style to guide the creation of a particular product can help preserve consistency and clarity. Certain visual motifs are often associated with others (certain typefaces may be considered playful, and are expected in conjunction with a youthful and vibrant colour scheme), and knowing what expected conventions exist might help in designing something that has a consistent voice and character.
When designing within a system—one book cover in a series, an app for Android or iOS—a design style which dictates common motifs for the system at large helps to show cohesion and interconnectedness. Having consistent design principles and some measure of consistent visual design between all iOS apps, for example, leverages the existing familiarity and trust users have in the entire iOS interface and app ecosystem, and makes each individual application a little friendlier and accessible.
So that’s style. But it’s worth taking a look at not just what a design style is and what it is for, but what it is not—and where a discussion centered around design style may fall short in the design process.
Style in the design process
Designers tend to self-identify as practitioners of particular style, or take great pains to develop an identifiable signature in the work they do. Having some kind of calling card and distinct look isn’t a bad thing—famous designers are often characterized by how they employ type, grids, and colour in highly individualistic ways—but personal style should only go so far in dictating design decisions.
The limitations of a personal design style
Designer and blogger David Airey recently published an interview with Eric Karjaluoto, the writer of the book The Design Method. When asked, “You say the voice of the designer is irrelevant — what do you mean?”, Karjaluoto responds:
I’m speaking specifically about individual personality and style. Design is often considered a close cousin to art, and this misunderstanding clouds what our industry is about. New designers, in particular, want to imbue their work with their own sensibilities, but this desire isn’t actually that important.
Clients…need design that is built around their needs and amplifies their organization’s values and aspirations. Designers need to gear themselves to think about their clients’ needs first.
Although this specifically references client work, it’s easy to extend this rhetoric to any design work that is intended to reach and communicate with more people than just yourself. A rigid adherence to one “design style” could be a very real threat to the work you produce—whether for yourself or for a client—if you allow your personal preferences and habits to overshadow the needs of the project you’re working on and the message you need to communicate.
Making aesthetic decisions without context can result in design solutions which are inappropriate for the medium, inappropriate for the voice of the content and speaker, and inappropriate for the information being presented.
Style without context
When we talk about design, it’s convenient and easy to talk about design styles to express what a design is or what it strives to be. “I want this to be really minimal” might be your way of expressing “I want the content to be front and center, and I don’t want unnecessary visual details to detract from it.” Usually—hopefully—people are translating the names you use to the principles they symbolize.
But a verbal shortcut can quickly become a cognitive shortcut, and it’s all too easy to start equating a design style with what it looks like, not what it does. We start treating a design style not as a set of problem-solving techniques, but a coat of paint. Minimal means whitespace, monochrome, sparse visual details. The principles behind minimalism—although critical in determining how appropriate and effective a minimalist style might be—are left behind.
When we see style as visual conventions for how things should look, instead of visual solutions, we trivialize design. We have to remember that design is a process, not just an end result—then we can think of different design styles as different means to an end, not recipe books for how we create. Design styles are sets of techniques we can employ, not ideologies that require absolute commitment or loyalty.
A great example of the pitfalls of design-style-as-ideology can be found in the skeuomorphic vs. flat design debate. The advent of the chromatically bold and visually adventurous Windows Metro design style, as well as the iOS interface redesign that dispensed with certain skeuomorphic vagaries for a more consistent, “flattened” design, have sparked considerable discussion on the decline of skeuomorphism and the rise of a flat trend. But it’s also a particularly instructive example of the limitations in how we talk about design style and its use.
Skeuomorphism yesterday, flat today
Skeuomorphism here refers to the practice of imitating real-life effects and metaphors and a 3D-ish look in digital interface design. It was largely popularized by Apple software interfaces which had ebook reading apps take a very literal approach to the reading interface—you had to literally “flip” digital blocks of text and watch a page animation bring you new content—and calendar apps which mimicked the pebbled-leather bindings of physical desk calendars.
The strengths of skeuomorphic design were in employing real-world metaphors to aid usability and familiarity. Buttons that feel 3D clearly state, You can interact with me. I’ll do something. I’ll respond.But the weaknesses of skeuomorphic designs were in introducing those metaphors without a clear intent and purpose. What about a navigational device where you have to “flip” pages of text like a book? Does mimicking a book have a use here? Are the pixels-pretending-to-be-pages more effective than just using forward-back arrows? Does that physical metaphor have a place?
Flat design has come into vogue largely as a reaction to the excesses and weaknesses of skeuomorphism. It eschews physical metaphors for digital design patterns. So we’ve moved from leather-and-wood-textured surfaces to flat, bright colours; inset text to dimensionless, straightforward text; physical metaphors to purely digital paradigms. And in the conversation around the large-scale abandonment of skeuomorphism and the adoption of flat design in many, many interfaces, it’s too easy to focus on the what instead of the why.
The what—what your buttons should look like, what your menu bars should look like, what your colour palette should look like. These things are straightforward questions with straightforward answers. But the whys complicate things. Why were the skeuomorphic-style buttons ineffective? Why are these flat design paradigms more usable? Why are we dispensing with things that mimic corkboards and notepads for unabashedly digital interfaces? What have we gained in the capabilities of our designed objects? What have we lost?
It’s really easy to read design blogs and tech press now and get the sense that skeuomorphism has been entirely disavowed as the old and inefficient way of designing things. But it’s too absolutist to characterize this trend as entirely abandoning one style for another.
As software product design drifts away from heavy skeuomorphic metaphors to the visual style and principles of flat design, the core requirements for a well-designed application still hold. A Smashing Magazine article called “Flat And Thin Are In” champions the rise of the “flat trend”, but its discussion on the best practices behind flat design end up being best practices for design in general. Focus on content, use grids for order and hierarchy, pay attention to colour and typography. Sound familiar?
And even if the visual style of the redesigned iOS 7 interface might signal a departure from skeuomorphism, the principles of employing physical metaphors and effects is still there—in a subtler form. Technology blogger Rene Ritchie has an excellent writeup on the richer interactions and effects in iOS 7, and emphasizes how the physics of small interactions and movements has been beefed up. These are skeuomorphic ideas applied to a different aspect of the interface.
Skeuomorphism had—and still has—a purpose. Flat design will also have its strengths and weaknesses as a design style, and figuring out how far to lean in either direction—or which elements to borrow from one or both styles—requires an understanding of design beyond the what. Figure out the requirements for a designed object, and employ a visual style which can most elegantly meet those requirements.
Design style is an immensely helpful framework throughout the design process. But the use of style should go beyond hardcoded rules and regulations. Taking a larger view of design style, one that emphasizes pragmatic problem-solving over trend-driven ideology, leads to a more thoughtful design process—and, hopefully, the creation of more nuanced and effective design.
Moving beyond design style
In exploring a style, remember that it is one way of seeing the world and the possible design solutions that exist, and not the only way. Be thoughtful, and consider a style not just in terms of how it looks but what it does. Combine motifs from different styles as appropriate. Consider the relative merits of different styles. What purposes can one style serve better than another? What associations does one style promote more clearly?
The most compact explanation I’ve seen on the limits of relying on a particular style comes from designer, writer, and educator Frank Chimero. In his response to “What advice would you give a graphic design student?”, he says—
Aesthetics are fleeting, the only things with longevity are ideas…Be wary of minimalism as an aesthetic decision without cause.
Design is communication. In choosing a visual style, be able to articulate—if only to yourself—why you chose it.
Expect your style to evolve and adapt—for the purpose, for shifts in trends and preferences, for different periods of your career and life. As designer and webcomic writer Rosscott advises design students,
Having a style is another way of saying you’re predictable.
Be inventive. Surprise yourself. Surprise others. Let your design be adaptive and reactive to the situation, and your design work address the purpose of the product and the context it inhabits. Investigate different design styles, adopt them, appreciate them, employ them—but in ways which enhance the expressivity and effectiveness of your work.
