Friday, July 28, 2006

Design vs. Styling

I listened to a presentation by a car designer from Landrover who defined the difference between car design and car styling.

He defined car design as working from the ground up to make sure that all the "big bits" were in the right place...his premise was that if all of theses are in the right place then the car drives well and looks good.

He defined car styling as what you need to do to a car that has poor design, you have to add bolt on parts and features to make the user believe that it is well designed when it is not....

This made me think about the world of IT where much time is spent on "styling" and not enough time is spent on good "design". It is the role of architecture to try to change this balance.

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