When I was mourning the untimely demise of my old G5 Power Mac, it wasn’t just the inconvenience of the time lost and the cost to replace it – there was an emotional attachment. That may sound a bit funny considering it’s chunk of aluminum with lots of bits and pieces inside, but I did have some sort of connection with that machine. I remember opening the box when it first arrived, marveling at the little details in the packaging, the minimal amount of effort in hooking up cables, and the intuitiveness of its initial start up. After a few moments, I sat back and said to myself – “This is a beautiful machine.”

Design, in many ways, can be like the referee in your favorite sport – they only get noticed when something goes very wrong or very right. At the highest levels, they are a necessity of the game, keeping both teams honest and the game on track – but overall, we’d like them to be as invisible as possible. The only time you learn their names are when they’ve made a number of bad calls or one horrific call that dooms your team for the day. Even when they make a call in favor of your team, it’s not that likely their name will cross your mind later that day. In other words, good design shouldn’t be obvious.

I’ve found that over the years, little details are much more noticeable to me. With my last new car, I was constantly marveling at the small things built into the overall design which served a very specific purpose but were also unobtrusive to everyday use. It was good design – give me something I can use, and when I need a little something extra it’s been right there waiting for me without making itself obvious. That’s brilliant design.

The idea of making something looked “undesigned” is fascinating to me because it represents a tremendous amount of effort, thought, and tinkering to make a thing look as if that’s the way it’s supposed to look – as if to say “Well of course it looks that way, how else could it look?” It’s a challenge to be answered.