Redesigning the airport boarding pass (2010)
I like that we are integrating more and more well designed products and utilities in our day to day life; beautiful, easy to use objects are no longer a luxury. That by itself is a glorious win.<p>People, however, tend to forget the old but gold adage: &quot;Form follows Functionality&quot;. I mean, this talented designer ventured into poking fun of the work of other people without even taking the time to understand the problem, the proposed solution, and the constraints that were&#x2F;are in place.<p>Yes, his design is infinitely more good looking. But did the designer took into consideration how applicable is it in the real world, with real logistics and real business scenarios? No. Of course he didn&#x27;t.<p>The reason I&#x27;m saying this is because I suffer those atrocities every day in my work, were I&#x27;m tasked with the coordination between journalists and designers for a business magazine.<p>Where I work, we believe that infographics&#x27; main mission is to help readers wrap their heads around things they wouldn&#x27;t if we presented them as text or tables. That&#x27;s the point of them being there in the first place. Making them pretty is just a way to make people look at them, and be happy while they learn something new. It is so satisfying to create such pieces.<p>Designers, however, seem to discard all of that, caring only about how trendy the damn gradient is. I was even called ignorant and &#x27;noob&#x27; by a designer, one that I fought to recruit a week earlier, because I suggested making numbers readable, something he deemed old-fashioned and would ruin his master-fucking-piece.<p>I really hope that people will be more aware that design is not a goal by itself; it&#x27;s a tool to make people care, learn and be more happy.<p>Edit: OMGrammar!