I love it when people say plainly and clearly what has been ambiguously bouncing around in my head, slightly beyond my ability to structure and articulate. This is how I felt when I read Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things and C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity (for those who only know Lewis from the Narnia series, I strongly recommend looking up some of his grown-up books – The Great Divorce is a good place to start).

The defensible and “damn-near-timeless” design of the British Rail logomark

I had this feeling again today, when I read an article by Adam Greenfield in this week’s double issue of web-design-weekly A List Apart. Adam explores and contrasts the art and science of design as problem solving against the art of style as expression. Without shitting on anyone, he draws a line between the designer and the stylist.

The article, The Bathing Ape Has No Clothes: and Other Notes on the Distinction Between Style and Design expresses, better than I could myself, how I feel about design. Design and style are not mutually exclusive, but they are different.

Also worth a look, dicovered via v-2.org (warning – this site breaks your Back button), a site by the author of the aforementioned article, Gasoline Signs: corporate identity in the real world.