Form vs Function

From vs. function.

What’s the big deal anyway?

In the design world, there is an ongoing debate and struggle with those that create and those that need the creators to create. For instance, a client will come to a designer to get a website for their business. The businessman has a goal; he wants customers to read information about his company. It’s at this point when there can be a bit of a struggle between the designer and the client.

The client wants something to be done: he wants people to go to his website to get more information about his company. That’s what needs to be done; that’s what he’s paying for. The designer understands this, but after he shows the client a few designs of how the website will look, the client says, “I need something that is more functional?” He wants the site to be easier to use; he wants his customers to easily access the information they need.

It’s at this point that the dilemma begins. The designer doesn’t want to sacrifice his creation to make the function easier. He would rather the form be as it is, in all it’s beauty, than to change the form of his design for the client. He doesn’t want to sacrifice his beautiful design simply to appease the clients needs.

So what’s going on? Why is there this tension?

First, we have to understand as best we can what the terms mean. What does function really mean, and what does form really mean? We can see that the client wants something to happen: he wants his customers to find information about his business. Ok, so that’s the function. What is the function? Customers reading information about his business. Got it? Good. So function is simply this: what is the goal? The goal is the function. The goal for the business owner is to have clients get information about his company. That’s it.

So what is form? Form is how customers get that information. The form is the means to the function. The function is the goal; it’s the end. The form is the means to the end. The designer’s responsibility is to create a form that accomplishes the goal. How does he do that? He can use a website, he can create a flash intro, he can have custom forms made, he can use different colors, etc. But all these things, even the website itself, are just the means to the end. The end is to accomplish the goal. How that goal is accomplished is the form. And the designer is in charge of creating the form that makes the goal possible.

We can see, then, that without function, there would be no form at all. There would be no reason for the form to exist, because there is nothing that needs to be accomplished. There’s no goal. If there’s no goal, there’s no form needed to accomplish the goal. This may sound simple to understand, but many problems designers face come from the fact that they mistake the means for the ends. They put the cart before the horse, and at times, the form stands in the way of getting the goal accomplished, like when a person can’t view the website because the flash intro is too big to download. In that case, the designer has failed to realize what his responsibility is: he didn’t focus on the goal. Bad form.

So, now that we can see that the form is the means to accomplish the goal, and the function is the goal that needs to be accomplished, what is really going on? What’s all this tension for between the designer and the client?

At times, I’d say the tension exists because the designers wants to do something that is outside of his responsibilities; the designer wants to create art. He wants to create something that has value in and of itself, without having to accomplish any goals at all. He wants the form to be beautiful just by it’s very nature. Isn’t that worth something? Oh, it is. It’s wonderful. But it’s not good form. It doesn’t make the end goal possible, and that means the form is poor. But, by itself, it can be a very good work of art. But as a form, it fails to do what it is supposed to do, to help us accomplish the goal.

So really, the problem comes from the designer mixing up his own function. He has mistaken his own means for his ends. His end, or his goal, is to create ways that help us accomplish goals. His function is not to create art, because that would be the function of an artist. A designer’s end is to create forms that help us function, or forms that help us accomplish our goals. A good designer uses art as a way to help accomplish his goal.

For instance, a wedding photographer’s goal, or function, is to record the wedding day through the medium of photography. That’s his goal. Capture the memories on film. His form, or his means of accomplishing the goal, is the photograph. He uses the photograph to accomplish the goal of recording the wedding day. Now, it’s possible that the wedding photographer has mastered the form of the photograph so well that the photo, by it’s very nature, is art. That is, by itself, the photo has value. It is beautiful simply as a photograph. The wedding photographer’s goal is always to record the wedding day, but the master photographer understands the form so well, that the form becomes art itself.

Excellent form is art, but art does not have to be good form.

The debate between form vs. function shouldn’t even exist. The debate is really art vs. function.

- Daniel Vineyard
Bellephotos.com