Abstract

Is beauty only in the eye of the be-holder or is there anything beyond it? One may wonder what makes a product beautiful and what does not. Is there a structure of beauty in product design? Can there be a universal template (read structure) that will assist in designing products that are pleasing to our senses? This paper is an attempt to unravel some of these mysteries. As a first step, all the design elements and principles as proposed by different authors have been taken up and analyzed for their roles in the product design. The works of 14 different authors who have contributed majorly during the last 100 years in the area of Design Aesthetics or Art Education or Design Philosophy have been studied. A comparative study of the design elements and design principles proposed by them has been made. Though most of the 14 authors differ in their proposal of design elements and principles, interestingly they all could provide some tangible solution (visual order) to the design problems in their approaches. The reasons for the diversity in the design principles have been explored and the basic design principles have been identified in this paper. It concludes with a discussion on whether ‘unity’ is the final attainment in product design.