Last year during Italy Design Week 2.0, there was a spirited debate about the utility of beauty in design. The panelists, who included Makers, Journalists and Technologists, sparred over the appropriate value to ascribe to beauty as represented through design. This blog contended that consumers place a high value on beautiful design and, therefore, beauty is very much integral in commercial technology design.
A recent New York Times blog article touches on these questions – you can read it here – and affirms that beautiful design is in high demand in Silicon Valley. Why? The human consumer attaches value to elegance and beauty in the marketplace.
The head designer of Google Search is quoted as saying, “One pillar of great design is beauty – having an emotional quality to our design and an emotional resonance — and that wasn’t really baked into the original Google products so much.”
Stefano Micelli writes of the coming futuro artigiano, a future in which craftsmanship and beauty are of critical relevance. In the teaser for his best-selling book, Mr. Micelli writes:
What unites the major brands of Italian precision machinery we export all over the world? What binds the production of limited edition design pieces and the construction of amusement park and skyscrapers blueprints? The thread that runs through the successful Made in Italy is still the work of the artisan, a part of our culture that often we do not give the correct value.
Italian artisanship is a critical component of Italy’s DNA and flourishes in the many mediums. Take, for instance, the Italian expertise in website design and UIX that puts beautiful design at the forefront. Hundreds of boutique Italian firms are doing great work in this area. Click here to get a sense of the varied talent at play in Italy and see below for some beautiful examples.
(http://chesini.it/it/ designed by Go To Studio of Verona)
(www.poddapontiarchitetti.it designed by Area Web of Brescia)
