12 universal design principles
A couple of months ago I started reading about designers’ thoughts on design. As I was digging deeper, I found an index with more than 200 manifestos from all around the world, some of which were over 100 years old. I was struck by the way people talked about the transformative power of our field and how it shapes the world around us, so I decided to read them all and extract the key ideas, trying to capture the essence of design across countries and time. As a result, I ended up with a lot of raw data — more than 200 statements from over 45 sources — which I filtered, clustered and sorted into the following 12 main principles.
The 12 Principles
- Form is function.
- Design must be understandable.
- Design must have a purpose.
- Design must be done under high-quality standards.
- Design should generate value and be economically sustainable.
- Design should be simple.
- The design process is exploratory, challenging and erratic.
- Design influences and is influenced by every other discipline.
- Design is a driver of change.
- Designing is not only creating but also adapting and fixing.
- Design requires a deep understanding of the context.
- Design must serve the environment and society.
1. Form is function.
Talking about form is talking about function and vice versa. Beauty and aesthetics enhance functionality and they should never be treated as separate things.
“I am certain that we must not leave our territory to do this, but rather regain it. Architecture and design have their own formal and poetic perspectives and contributions that remain valid. As long as we make things we must consider how to improve our physical and spiritual environment. At the centre of all this we must remind ourselves of the importance of architecture and design as a physical embodiment of our desire for ideas and beauty, and it’s potential to silently inspire.” David Chipperfield.
2. Design must be understandable.
Design is a bridge between people and technology. One of its main functions is making things communicate by themselves, therefore it should always be done in the language of humanity.
“We architects and designers harness multiple complexities; all the while we refine complication into elegance, we revive aesthetics, we do something that smells like art, we resort to taste and sophistication, we tag onto an ‘upper class.’ We architects and designers make places for people; but the more parameters we use to design, the less our design-process can be read in the places we build — if people can’t ‘get’ the buildings we make, then those buildings are meant to appear as a force of nature, and we expect from people only belief.” Vito Acconci.
3. Design must have a purpose.
Whether you are working on a national design system or on a website of a small local business, every design has a function. One of the key roles of a designer is to find it and make decisions based on it.
“Balance before talents. Make decissions that really fits the problem you are solving.” Allan Chochinov.
4. Design must be done under high-quality standards.
Even if we have to move fast sometimes and prioritize doing over perfection, we cannot lower the bar. A whole experience can be affected just by small details.
“Good design is thorough down to the last detail.” Dieter Rams.
5. Design should generate value and be economically sustainable.
We love to think big but we have to keep our feet on the ground. A design will only be good if it is doable, and money is one of the biggest constraints we face. Value the ability to do as good as you can with as little as possible.
“At the risk of over-simplification, the designer’s task could be summed up as analysing set problems in the widest sense and organising the best available resources to achieve the highest-performance solution in the most economical manner.” Norman Foster.
6. Design should be simple.
Design must be simple not only in its form but also in its purpose. It should always aim to simplify people’s life by removing boundaries or improving the ratio between necessary effort and outcome, whether it is tangible or not.
“Design is a synthetic work: you need to reduce and remove until you reach the core of the message.” Bob Noorda.
7. The design process is exploratory, challenging and erratic.
Almost nothing is perennial in design. There are so many nuances between projects that it’s hard to find certainties. It is necessary to embrace this complexity and face it with a resolute mentality.
“Reading to our small son Bobby, we met our unlikely role model. Curious George, a cute little monkey who travelled from the jungle to live in the exciting modern world, is driven by curiosity to play and experiment with everything that surrounds him. He finds new uses for familiar things, invents different ways for our daily routines, tests the limits of materials and objects. Many of his experiments don’t work, and he routinely gets in trouble, but occasionally he reaps praise or a medal. This sounds a lot like the designer’s life. After all, the role of the designer today is to be on the continual lookout, to detect all the intangible vibes of emerging needs, trends, and desires, to play with them, and eventually to re-interpret them as products for public use.” Constantin and Laurene Leon Boym.
8. Design influences and is influenced by every other discipline.
Design is a multidisciplinary work that serves as a meeting point for professionals of many kinds. We have to meet technical, economical and social requirements while keeping our role as creators of beauty and functionality. It is important to break the silos to impulse collaboration between peers.
“Design is a means of creating social, cultural, industrial and economic values by merging humanities, science, technology and the arts.” Kyoto Design Declaration.
9. Design is a driver of change.
Because of its ability to catalyze innovation, its exploratory nature and its role as a meeting point between many fields, design is a powerful tool to generate change.
“[Design]…It can do more than please consumers and businesses; it can influence policy and research and translate technological revolutions into human format, while providing useful feedback from the field about human needs to scientists and politicians. Design can act as a bridge between the abstraction of strategy and the complex details of the real world. Designers are advocating roles that are more and more integral to the evolution of society. Among those in charge of shaping the future of the world, they are the most benign, responsible and visionary.” Paola Antonelli.
10. Designing is not only creating but also adapting and fixing.
Our mentality should be to leverage what already exists and think if we can improve it or adapt it before even thinking about creating something new. By doing so, we will understand better the problem we are trying to solve, and we will have the chance to be more efficient.
“Elisha Otis did create the safety catch that would prevent a vertically mobile enclosure from plummeting from great heights to great depths at very high speeds, injuring its passengers. This invention was demonstrated at the 1853 World’s Fair in New York, almost five thousand years after the elevator first came into usage. Otis exemplifies what I call the designer’s dilemma — the tension that exists in the space between inventing and improving. If the designer’s role is to drive innovation on a large scale, how can we resolve ourselves to the incremental improvements that are necessitated by today’s increasingly complex culture?.” Valery Casey.
11. Design requires a deep understanding of the context.
To bring certainty to design, we need to build a solid foundation based on research. Since context is changing, we also have to test our work, thus building a wheel of constant-improvement.
“Good design expresses both the zeitgeist and a deep awareness of the past.” Hella Jongerius and Louise Schouwenberg.
12. Design must serve the environment and society.
We have to aim to improve the world we live in. It’s not just about helping to solve the big challenges humanity is facing — like climate change or social inequalities — but also about smaller, equally impactful things such as accessibility and solutions that fit everyone's needs.
“Let us move from human-centered design to humanity-centered design. We are a community that exerts great influence. We must protect and nurture the potential to do good with it. We must do this with attention to inequality, with humility, and with love. In the end, our reward will be to know that we have done everything in our power to leave our garden patch a little greener than we found it.” The Copenhagen Letter.
Final thoughts.
These principles reflect the thoughts of some of the most renowned designers of all time, but also those from anonymous people whose thinking helped me find nuances.
As you have seen most of the principles are aspirational. It responds to manifestos’ nature, which is more philosophical than practical. Nevertheless, I’ve found that it is useful to develop not just our designing skills and ability with tools, but also our thinking. Reading the reflections of so many talented people has been an enriching experience, and definitely made me a better designer. You can check the database I created in Notion with all the principles.
I’m constantly looking for references and new sources, which means it will be a never-ending work-in-progress project. In future editions, I will look at some important industries that I’m missing right now. There are some incredible designers I want to study such as Coco Channel, Cristobal Balenciaga or Virgil Abloh. I also want to delve into my roots and look for Spanish designers like Enrique Berrens, who worked in Braun with Dieter Rams.
Follow me for more stories about people, design & technology. I’m a designer specializing in UX and strategy, with a strong interest in philosophy and economics.
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