Good Design Comes from Looking, Great Design Comes from Looking Away
Great design comes from seeing — seeing something for what it truly is, what it needs, and what it can be — both up close and at a distance. A great designer can focus intently on the smallest of details while still keeping the big picture in view, perceiving both the thing itself and its surrounding context. Designers who move most fluidly between these perspectives create work that endures and inspires.
But there’s a paradox at the heart of design that’s rarely discussed: the discipline that most profoundly determines how lasting and inspiring a work of design can be is a designer’s ability to look away — not just from their own work, but from other solutions, other possibilities, other designers’ takes on similar problems.
This runs counter to conventional wisdom. We’re told to study the masters, to immerse ourselves in the history of our craft, to stay current with trends and innovations. There’s value in this, of course — foundational knowledge creates the soil from which original work can grow. But there comes a point where looking at too many existing solutions becomes not illuminating but constraining.
Design, as I’ve defined it before, is about giving form to intent. Intent is a matter shared between those with a need and those with a vision for a solution. What makes solutions truly special is when that vision is deeply personal and unique — when it emerges from within rather than being assembled from external reference points.
The most distinctive voices in design history all approached creative problems with an obsessive level of attention to detail and the highest standard for the appropriateness of their solutions. But they all also trusted that their unique sensibilities would not just set their work apart but be embraced for its humanity. Dieter Rams didn’t create his revolutionary product designs by studying how others had approached similar problems — he developed principles based on his own sense of what makes design “good.” Susan Kare didn’t design her iconic Apple interface elements by mimicking existing computer graphics — she drew inspiration from everyday symbols, folk art, and her background in fine arts to create a visual language that felt both novel and instantly familiar. Jony Ive’s groundbreaking Apple products didn’t merely iterate on existing consumer electronics and make them smoother and shinier — they emerged from his obsession with materials, manufacturing processes, and a relentless pursuit of simplicity that often meant ignoring industry conventions. All were met with hot takes as instantly as the reverence we remember.
The most innovative solutions often come from designers who are aware of conventions but not beholden to them. They know the rules well enough to break them purposefully. They understand context but aren’t limited by precedent. They’ve cultivated the discipline to look away from existing solutions when it matters most — during the critical phases of ideation and development when uniqueness of vision is most vulnerable to external influence.
This discipline of looking away preserves the singularity that makes great design resonant. When we constantly reference existing solutions, our work inevitably gravitates toward the mean. We solve for expectations rather than needs. We optimize for recognition rather than revelation. We produce work that feels familiar and safe but lacks the distinctive character that makes design truly compelling. Looking away creates space for intuition to operate. It allows us to draw from deeper wells of experience and insight rather than responding to surface-level trends and patterns. It gives permission for the unexpected connections and novel approaches that define breakthrough work.
This is perhaps the most difficult discipline in design — harder than mastering software, harder than learning color theory, harder than understanding grids and proportions. It requires confidence to trust your own vision when countless examples of “how it’s done” are just a search away. It demands the courage to pursue a direction that hasn’t been validated by others. It necessitates comfort with uncertainty when established patterns offer the security of the proven. It requires an acceptance, if not a desire, for risk — of failure, rejection, being misunderstood, or just being overlooked. Sometimes that’s something we can learn from; sometimes it’s just a matter of creating in a very crowded world.
The most valuable thing a designer brings to any problem is not their knowledge of existing solutions but their unique perspective — their particular way of seeing and making sense of the world. This perspective is preserved and strengthened not by constant reference to what others have done, but by the discipline of looking away and trusting what emerges from within. Trust that what is truly weird this year will become next year’s standard.
Great design requires both looking and looking away — studying and ignoring, learning and forgetting, absorbing and creating. The magic happens not just in what we choose to see, but in what we deliberately choose not to see.
Written by Christopher Butler on
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