WwW

evidence-based
design?

Jorge Frascara

DESIGN HAS MOVED on fuzzy grounds for a long time.
Decisions have followed best practices, opinion leaders,
“good taste,” aesthetic fads, and personal assumptions
about what works and what doesn't. Since the times of
William Morris, through the Bauhaus times, well into the xx
Century, and even today, many designers worked all their
lives on those grounds because research and evaluation
were not part of design culture. They have existed in the
culture of colour since the 1700s, and in the legibility of
print since the first studies by Tinker in 1925. It took hold in
advertising in the 1950s: if the product you were announcing
in your smart looking campaign did not sell, your agency
lost the account. But if you were designing a leaflet for a
pharmaceutical product, as long as all the information that
the law required was there, you were good.

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