Design — the practical creative tradition

Design is creativity under constraint — working always in service of a function, an audience, a material reality that cannot be wished away, which is not a diminishment of creative freedom but a clarification of what creative freedom is for. The best design solves a problem in a way that also creates something beautiful, and does not apologize for that beauty as though it were surplus to the practical purpose. To design is to believe that how a thing looks and how it works are finally the same question.