Skillful use of good design can create experience that are emotionally moving. At the same time, good design - through improved communication and clarity - can make things easier to use. The characterristics of good design can bring increased credibility to our company and ultimately influence the decisions of our customers. Skillful use of good design can affect emotions, build credibility and earn trust. Finally, good design can actually make things easier to use. But to really achieve these results, you have to understand design holistically.

Steve Jobs once said,

In most people's vocabularies, design is a veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product.

Pantheon is taking the form of a semicircular dome on top of a cylinder. At 142 feet, it remains the tallest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. At the very top of this dome, a 30-foot wide oculus (hole) projects a beam of sunlight into the building, lighting the interior. This is how the Pntheon has such an impact. Upon entering, we're enveloped by another world, complete with its very own sun.

Part of the impact of the Pantheon comes from the relationship between this incredible spatial experience and the materials used to create it. To achieve this form, the Pantheon pushes the limits of the materials from which it is built, which helps explain why a dome of this height hasn’t been created with the same technology since. So much reinforcement is needed to keep this dome standing that the walls of the dome are 20 feet thick at the base of the dome and only 4 feet thick at the edge of the oculus.

To better manage the weight of the concrete, hard and durable basalt was added to the mix for the foundations, with the mix gradually getting lighter, until pumice rock was used toward the oculus. That way, the base of the dome has the weight and strength to support the rest of the dome, while the upper parts of the dome are thin and light, reducing their load upon the base.

To make the dome material even lighter, a series of recessed squares, or coffers, are formed within the dome. These coffers, which exist by engineering necessity, contribute to the impact of the interior. They rhythmically radiate from the oculus, creating visual interest, while contrasting with the smooth concrete that immediately surrounds the oculus.

In concert with these technical considerations, the designers of the Pantheon had to make some aesthetic choices as well. Because the fl oor is too large to be made with one piece of marble, it’s made up of various pieces. Th is marble is laid out in a pattern of basic circular and square forms, which are in geometric harmony with the rest of the interior.

Th e marble used within the Pantheon was in different colors, as well, so care had to be taken to ensure that there was harmony and beauty in how the various colors of marble interacted with one another.

All these factors worked together and were considered so masterfully that the Pantheon is one of the most infl uential buildings in the history of architecture. From St. Peter’s (just down the road from the Pantheon, in Vatican City) to the U.S. Capitol building, the dome of the Pantheon has inspired the design of buildings all over the world.

This careful marriage of all the “layers” of design are what makes a design beautiful, timeless, and, ultimately, successful in reaching its goals. The intentions of a design work together with the limitations of the technology used to create the design, as well as with harmonies of form, geometry, and color. All these pieces, all these layers, are inextricably linked with one another, forming the whole of what truly is design.

What Design Is Not

Like Steve Jobs said, many people think of design as some kind of afterthought - the upholstery on a couch, the logo on a business card, or the visual look of a button on a website. In pursuit of understanding design, many are led down the fruitless path of approaching design with this definition in mind. They may try to learn how to create a particular visual effect, repeatedly refer to lists of do's and don'ts, or try adding visual elements to a design that do little but create clutter.

To keep yourself creating good design, you need to learn how to understand all the layers that create great design. To create great design: Don't draw ponies.

Chances are, when you were in grade school, there was a kid in your class who everyone thought of as a good artist. His big secret was, he only knew how to draw one thing. In my third-grade class, there was a girl who chould draw ponies. She drew beautiful ponies. They had big, juicy eyes and long, flowing manes. They had smooth, powerful muscles, and looked as if they could leap off the page. The other kids in class would crowd around her as she drew pony after beautiful pony. Then, one day, someone asked her to draw a portrait.

僕の顔を描いて！

he said. The girl looked scared.

そうだ。描いてみろ！

the other kids cheered. So, reluctantly, she tried to draw the boy. As you can probably imagine, the resulting drawing looked nothing like the boy at all. His eyes were lifeless, flattened footballs. His hair was a random mess of scribbless.

人はうまく描けないわ

She said, sheepishly. Everyone seemed disappointed, but they still wanted to believe that she was a good artist.

I was too young to figure it our then, but eventually I got it. All the ponies the girl drew were essentially the same. Most of them had the same post. The heads were at the same angle. Maybe the front hoof of each of the ponies was pulled up, as if the pony were ready to begin a gallop. She probably had just learned to draw a pony from one, maybe two angles - maybe from a picture in a magazine - and just repeated that over and over again. She was really good at drawing ponies this way.

But the pony-drawing girl didn't conceptually understand ponies. She didn't understand the layers that make up a design.