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I have always appre­ci­ated good design, even before I was aware of what design was.  Growing up, I enjoyed beau­ti­ful objects so much that I’d often draw them on a note­book. And although I didn’t know yet that beau­ti­ful doesn’t always equate good design, at least I had the good sense, even back then, to won­der what pur­pose a cer­tain gad­get or add-on accomplished.

“Daddy,” I’d ask my weary father, “why does Mazinger have yel­low horns stick­ing out of his ears?”

Like most chil­dren,  I had lit­tle patience toward poorly designed objects (read: toys). But I grew out of it, as chil­dren do, and got used to prod­ucts that would more often give you a headache than do what they were sup­pos­edly designed to do.

One day, a few years ago, Ann Szeto, a design pro­fes­sor at Sheridan College, said that every sin­gle object around has been designed by some­one.  Obvious as that is, it still bewil­dered me. I’d never fully appre­ci­ated how impor­tant design is. It’s every­where. It’s one of the most impor­tant pro­fes­sions in the world.  Yet most of us don’t have a clue of what good design is, per­haps because good design is near invis­i­ble. Neither are we par­tic­u­larly thank­ful for it—tell some­one you’re a designer, and their most likely response will be a polite, “Oh.”

I’ve grown fas­ci­nated by design. I am, after all, a writer, and what is good writ­ing if not good design—the prun­ing of prose, the elim­i­na­tion of nee­dles orna­ments, the abil­ity to con­vey a mes­sage in an as effi­cient and clear a man­ner as possible?

My inter­est in design is not lim­ited to writ­ing. From the iconic, easy-to-read dial of a Rolex Submariner to the effec­tive­ness of an OXO salad spin­ner, I’m always appre­cia­tive of and thank­ful for good design. This makes me intol­er­ant of poor design, espe­cially when it’s bla­tant or, even worse, inten­tional. Consider the pic­ture below, taken yes­ter­day in a TTC wagon:

What’s miss­ing? Look above the doors. What do you see? Ads, and in one case, a blank space. What do you not see? What should you see above a sub­way train door? What would make the life of a com­muter easier?

The TTC is the first sub­way sys­tem I’ve ever used where it’s pos­si­ble to find only two maps in an entire wagon. In a crowded train, that may mean that a novice TTC user will get off at the wrong stop.

Of course, the TTC makes more money by dis­play­ing ads than by dis­play­ing maps, except in the case where it didn’t even post an ad. Thus money and care­less­ness trump good design. As they often do writing.