Ugly designs – They can be Beautiful

Perhaps you have heard these words “Ugly is underrated”
There is a reason why ugly designs exist. What is ugly design? Is the word ‘ugly’ ever meant to be used along with ‘design’? From what we know, design is meant to be ‘good’. We know design matters. We know it’s a deep and fundamental part of communicating brilliance. But we’re sometimes unsure about how to communicate that. This, maybe is the reason why there is a separate category of ‘Ugly designs’. Ugly is a word that carries hard moral implications. For centuries, ugliness has been associated not only with sickness and deformity but also dishonesty, violence, aggression, and bigotry. The meaning changed only in the fourteenth century, and began to mean “unpleasant to look at”. This shows how the word has been refined over decades. The word ugly is now primarily used to describe the unaesthetic aspect of things. Using it can shift a ‘well-meaning’ aesthetic critique into the realm of moral judgment.

Studies done in the emerging field of neuroaesthetics (study related to how the brain responds to aesthetic stimuli) have found that beautiful paintings and ugly paintings light up the same regions of the brain. Beauty does not occupy a different area of the brain than ugliness. Although we experience them differently, beauty and ugliness both tap into our emotional center, an area deeply involved in analysing other’s motives and actions and generating both sympathy and empathy. They say “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. If one wants to appreciate ugliness, the first thing one has to do is stop assuming that it is the inverse of beauty as opposites are a crutch. Beauty and ugliness do not negate each other. Beauty is a subset of design. But design is focused around purpose, on planning. That purpose is determined by the tangible and intangible factors around us. Designers are always looking for things that are inspired by other things – objects that look like animals or body parts, or things that were designed to look like other things. Weird idea flashes out and that when converted into an actual product causes it to stand out.

Ugly design is certainly not beautiful. People buy them because they’re funny or interesting, because they inspire a spark of weird happiness or they buy them out of irony. The products look like things we don’t usually associate with, yet they also don’t make sense, which creates a sense of discomfort. If one were to figure out the appeal of these weird products they seem to be familiar yet strange, ugly yet appealing, contemporary yet nostalgic, tasteless yet cool. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that ugly design is so trendy. Ugly, of course, is a relative term, and has always had its own appeal. Some of the “ugly designs” may not be ugly to everyone. Either way, they offer a fresh, eye-catching change from the usual design that prevails.

The thing about ugly design is that it isn’t enough for the object to be poorly made or unappealing, the object has to inspire questions. It has to feel absurd and a little unreal. It makes you wonder where it came from and who would think to connect these two different shapes to create this one thing. Their aesthetics don’t relate in any clear way to their function leaving consumers to marvel, Who came up with the design, and why? The most important needs are functionality and reliability and great designs consistently outperform bad ones. So when building products one should ask: is my design actually functional, or is it just nice colours and forms? Is my design truly good or do I just think it is? You can have good design that isn’t beautiful, but you definitely can’t have good design that isn’t functional. Ugly Design is not necessarily a crappy Design. Implementing it well means implementing it strategically, with a practiced eye. Whether designing a package, a retail space, or any other experience, deliberate ugly design is a lot like any other powerful tool – best wielded by the experts.