50 Times Product Designers Went Above And Beyond With Their Work (New Pics)

As per legendary German industrial designer Dieter Rams, good designs are innovative, aesthetic, unobtrusive, honest, environmentally friendly, long-lasting, thorough to the last detail, and useful, as well as understandable. And they should involve as little design as possible.

Finding the right balance between how a product looks (its form) and what it does (its function) is harder than it sounds. If you steer too much in either direction, you risk pushing your potential customer base away. You also need to consider how you market it. The reality is that no matter how gorgeous and efficient a product is, it also has to sell well to be considered successful. The most ‘perfect’ product is useless if it’s sitting in a warehouse, completely ignored.

If your product is beautiful to look at, you’re going to get a lot of attention. However, if it’s over-designed or overly complicated aesthetically, you might end up confusing your target audience. A product that looks more like an art piece than anything else can be difficult to use and hard to grasp in terms of function, from the very first glance

An over-the-top focus on form over function also alludes to a disconnect between the designer’s vision and the consumer. The former is important, of course! But you can’t alienate the people you hope to sell to. Unless you’re catering exclusively to the luxury market and high-end clients, you can’t rely on an approach that makes showpiece-worthy yet confusing things.

On the other side of the scale are perfectly functional products that do what they’re meant to do, but have little to no aesthetic appeal in their designs. To put it simply, human beings enjoy looking at beautiful things.

So, if your product lacks charisma and presence, it’ll end up being ignored in favor of something more stylish or ‘loud.’

Like it or not, if you want to sell well and keep your business afloat, you have to find a way to make your product visually appealing.

People often identify with the things they buy, seeing them as extensions of their personality, lifestyle, and values. Ignoring form entirely and ending up with a bland-looking product is going to hurt your company’s profits and your reputation as a designer.

Some designers think that if their invention works well, everyone should rush to buy it, regardless of how it looks. They don’t want to ‘pander’ to people’s tastes. And there’s a kernel of truth in that.

That being said, it’s not so much pandering as keeping a finger on society’s pulse and having a deeper understanding of how human and consumer psychology both work. If you’re in design, sales, and marketing, you can’t ignore what fundamentally drives people, from the desire to save time (efficiency) and money (being economical) to appreciating stylish things (love of beauty).

Designers and companies that manage to create an authentic relationship with their customers win out over the long run. Where there’s good communication, quality products, customer support, and mutual values and respect, you’ll also find profitability. Case in point, Investopedia draws attention to the Harvard Business School’s findings about how brand loyalty and profitability strongly correlate, where increasing customer retention rates by 5% leads to increased profits ranging anywhere from 25% to 95%.