Tuesday, January 20, 2009

LBRB


Left Brain - Right Brain

Imagine, I had a store. Imagine I had a concept for this store.
Here you have it: left brain, right brain.

This idea has been cruising about my own cerebral hemispheres for a while now and I am still very fond of it. The basic premise is that there are two opposite and complenting parts, each one fullfilling a requirement in design summed up in the distinctin between the left and the right halves of the brain. (see diagram.) Make sense?

I came up with this differentiation based on a dichotomy that I often perceive in design (the design of objects being mostly what I look at). There are those objects that are highly functional and efficient, simple, clean, well-working. These objects provide lot of satisfaction in the way they work, because that is exacty what they do: they work. They do what they are supposed to do, they do it well, and it's rather easy to define what it is they are doing.

On the other hand there are objects that we like for reasons that are more difficult to put into words. They achieve a more emotional satisfaction, through their beauty, the memories they evoke or perhaps their bizzare nature. And we need them both.

It is a distinciton I appreciate because I think these two aspects of design can get into eachother's way, and also because there is no way to define good design or a good thing without taking into account that there are polar reasons for why we might covet an object.

Also, I must admit, categorizing gives me great pleaseure. What more would be a better catogorizing guideline than a list of vague tendencies based on the most complex and mysterious organ of the most complex and mysterious lifeform on our lovely planet? (human hubris? but please...)

I hope that LBRB will leave room for everything, or at least everything that triggers my personal little neurons from the most indispensibly clever tools and inexplicably intriguing whatsits. Or things that are both at the same time??? Incroyable! Wait a minute... am I just talking about function and beauty?