What Makes a Design “Good”?

I've been thinking about design a lot lately and trying to decide what really makes a design good. Is it good because it's effective or because it's appealing? Are effective and appealing mutually exclusive or not?

Let's look at an example. One that immediately comes to mind is the new Tropicana packaging designs. They were pulled off shelves just two months after being launched...that's unprecedented (they are keeping the cool little orange-shaped cap though). Whether or not the package was appealing is a subjective matter but there's little doubt the new design was not effective. Tropicana sales plummeted 20% over two months, in a juice market where total sales remained flat. That means other juice makers got a boost in sales during those two months, while Tropicana lost about $33 million. People didn't stop buying juice, they just picked up a different brand. That's a pretty convincing argument for the importance of effective design.

New Design

Old Design

Images courtesy of DesignBoom.com

Why did the new design fail?

Was it because consumers didn't recognize the Tropicana brand? Possibly, new logo and all. To my eyes, the new design looks a lot like a private-label, generic brand circa 1976. And it breaks one of my cardinal design rules: never use the same font for the logo and all supporting copy. Other than the little leaf dotting the i, there's nothing to distinguish the brand name from the description.

Was it because consumers couldn't find the variety name (No Pulp, Some Pulp. Lots of Pulp)? That's possible too. I heard reports of people walking out of the store with a different variety than they intended to buy.

Award-Winning Design

What makes a design award-worthy? Who decides if a design wins an award and what are the criteria for judging it? Generally, it's simply the subjective opinion of a group of expert judges who are voting on how appealing the design is _to them_. One could argue that these design experts know what's effective from their experience and I'm sure that's often true. However, that award-winning design may or may not have been more effective for the client.

In the case of Tropicana, it could have won a design award, even when the design damaged client sales. That doesn't seem right, does it?

There have been plenty of award-winning television ads during the Super Bowl that scarcely mention the product in them. Think fast, can you recall what product the talking baby was pitching?

Should Design Be Noticed?

Unless you are selling design, I generally say no. I tell my clients all the time that if I do my job correctly, no one will notice what I have done. And I stand by that statement. A good design should be transparent. It's a vehicle to present the product or service to an audience. The Tropicana design obviously failed on that measure, somehow. We've all complained about Web sites with bad navigation and horrible design but when you use a site that's easy to navigate and intuitive, do you comment on the good design? Probably not, unless the design itself takes attention away from the product or service it's selling (or unless you are a design geek like me).

The Truth is in the Testing

Tropicana found this out the hard way because they tested their new design in the real world and it cost them. I would be surprised if they didn't do focus groups to find out the consumer response to this new packaging before launch. If they did test first, did they ignore the feedback or was the feedback good? Would be great to know.

I strongly recommend extensive user testing on any new design. The feedback that we get from user testing is invaluable and often surprising. When we test Web sites with a variety of users, we learn what's working and what isn't. The data we gather makes sure the design is effective, with measurable results.

Whether or not that design is good, I'll leave up to you. What do _you_ consider good design? Post some examples or talk about some of your favorites and why you like them.