Form as a Function: Fluid Forms as Functional Objects

Design is as much about the users’ visual and emotional experience as it is about the physical and functional experience. Although being a designer is about finding a “functionality” problem to solve or something to change; I find that it’s about self-expression as well. Through self-expression, a designer creates their own voice in the designed piece opening a line of emotional communication to the user. Although design always involves a conversation between the form and the function, form has its own aesthetic functionality, rendering a piece attractive and creating an emotional and visual experience that is beyond the physical functionality. In understanding and pleasing a user’s aesthetical desires, a designer is solving a functional problem as well.

To deliver aesthetics or beauty, a designer must define what beauty is. I find beauty in creating harmonious vivid and visually demanding forms that I draw from nature or my imagination rather than creating minimalist designs that revolve solely around practical functionality. Beauty to me is about transferring my visual ideas into a new sphere; into physical objects that are constructed from harmonious and fluid forms. A harmonious form has beauty, and beauty in itself is a function that I seek in my design work. I often start with a vision; a dream of a form, a process and a final object, then through design thinking and problem solving it develops to become a user-friendly object.