No truth without aesthetics, Paul Rand

In a short-film tribute to the late graphic design master Paul Rand, his view on the relationship between design and aesthetics is beautifully portrayed. Basically his statement “without aesthetics you cannot find the truth” is interesting in relation to our work with research through design.

The movie is made by Imaginary Forces.

On the surface of things beauty, morals and truth cannot be mixed. They belong to separate domains and should be thought of as so diverse categories that they are unable to say anything about each other. This is a fundamental distinction in philosophy going back to Plato: the beautiful, the right and the truth – or – the arts, the morality of society, and lastly the realm of science.

But when we talk about Research Through Design and use design as a method for research and epistemology, then the truth and the beautiful will mix. It’s all because of the wicked problems. The material of interaction design is the people who use a technology and the future technology itself, which constitutes what is known as wicked problems since there is not one given solution to the problem, but a range of possible solutions. The discussion of wicked problems is much longer than what I can fit into this post, but I have gone into some detail with it in my dissertation.

The point is: when a designer designs the future application and future use scenarios of an interactive technology he or she is dependent on their own skills as a designer to create something that is not only functional and useful, but also intriguing, pleasing and novel. This requires designerly aesthetic skills, and that the designer invests something of him/herself. The exact same functional system can be a disaster or a success with the users in the actual use context depending on the design of the system or service.

But what is ‘aesthetic skills?’ I hear you ask. And I promise I will tell you right when I have good a short description of that can be blogged.

I have included a short transcription of what Paul Rand says in the film after the ‘read more’

A fast transcription of what Paul Rand says:

“When you talk about design, everybody has a definition that doesn’t correspond with yours. There are many good definitions. One is the synthesis of form and content. In other words, without content there is no form, and without form there is no content.

A work of art is realised when form and content are indistinguishable. When form predominates meaning is blunted. But when content predominates interest lags. But the genius comes in when both of these things fuse.

‘Without the aesthetic’ means what is not done with love – that it is done for some … some alterative motive: Because it sells, because it popular, because it’s crazy, you know all this stuff.

Graphic design is one of these phrases that doesn’t mean anything. Because anything that’s graphic is graphic. Painting, dancing – if you see it, writing – I you see it – it’s graphic. The genre of art, of graphic design, of painting, is art. That’s the genre. It’s all art.

The vocabulary of a language of art, or of aesthetics: orders, variety, contrasts, symmetry, tension, balance, scale, texture, space, shape, light, shade and color.

This is the language of form.

Don’t try to be original, just try to be good. That’s sound sorta naïve but it’s true.

Without aesthetics, you can’t find the truth – to do things with quality. I think this is in a big sense what aesthetics means.

Art is an idea that has found its perfect form. There are too many possibilities. No matter how perfectly you do something, it can still be improved.”