Some Virtues of Design (My Modern Take)

I recently read an article written in 1997 by Gui Bonsiepe on Some Virtues of Design, and it made me more aware of how these virtues of design have evolved in this era. It’s interesting to see how they’ve served the design community over time and what needs to evolve in them to accommodate the problems we face today.

To me, virtues of design are the core principles guiding good practice. They cover both the aesthetic/functional side and the ethical/social side. They are the fundamentals that shape usable products and also help design create positive impact.

The goal of this article is to re-emphasize these values and how they can serve us in this new era of technological intelligence and in the years to come.

These are the shared values I’m focusing on here:

Lightness, Intellectuality, Public Domain, Otherness, Visuality, Graphicacy, Visual Thinking, Theory, and Attention.

Lightness

Decluttering the digital space

In today’s fast-paced digital era where the internet is cluttered with noise, distractions, and superficial content, designers have a real opportunity to introduce lightness. For me, lightness isn’t “simplicity for simplicity’s sake.” It’s about cutting through chaos to create intuitive, elegant and meaningful experiences.

When we take away digital clutter and focus on clarity, we give users something rare, something calm and purposeful interaction. Just like a well-designed object can elevate the mundane, good design today can offer grace and function in a world drowning in distractions.

Intellectuality

Willingness to challenge assumptions

I don’t hear people talk about the intellectuality of designers enough, and I think it comes from where design started; being practiced as a craft, with creates less emphasis on theory. But that has been changing. Designers are gradually moving away from the collective muteness of the profession. Writing, critique, and thinking publicly about design is becoming more normal.

For me, intellectuality means we don’t just build. We think deeply about what we’re building, why we’re building it, and what it will do to the people we are building it for. That’s how we make design more thoughtful, so we’re not just “mouse pushers.” Being smart and deliberate should always be part of the job.

Public Domain

Stewardship of the Public Domain of Design

Some of the most innovative designs in society came from civic values and sustained public responsibility, so functional that they’ve become invisible in our everyday society. A simple example is the traffic light.

This virtue reminds me that design is never neutral. Design choices shape how people move, understand, and participate in society. And especially now when market-led thinking dominates a lot of design priorities, we need to keep highlighting public responsibility.

Good public design should rise above short-term political or corporate cycles and pure commercial interest. Its primary responsibility is the collective, not just the client or the market. When design serves only private interests, it can deepen inequality and quietly exclude large parts of society.

Otherness

Concern for others

“Otherness” is simply the people, cultures, and realities that aren’t mine or yours, different races, genders, countries, values, ways of living. And for me, the designer’s job is to respect these differences because these are the people we’re building for.

This becomes political very quickly, because the people making design decisions often end up shaping the future experience of others. And if you don’t respect a group, or you don’t even acknowledge their realities , you’ll design solutions that force them to conform to the dominant approach.

The people left out of design decisions are often treated like “edge cases,” but the harm is real. That’s why they resist. So I believe we must design in ways that respect and include people outside the dominant rich-world viewpoint, not erase them, “fix” them, or force them into someone else’s idea of progress.

Visuality

Thinking through images

I’ve noticed society used to treat writing as more “intelligent” than diagrams, but digitization is shifting that. The world is becoming more visual and honestly, it’s succeeding partly because of visuality.

Still, I think we need to keep reminding ourselves that words don’t “push” images. They work together. This “imperialism of the word” has existed for a long time, and you can see it in education: reading and writing get priority, while visual and graphical thinking gets treated like a nice-to-have. The result is that many people become visually illiterate.

The irony is that humans communicated visually long before formal writing. That alone tells me visuality isn’t shallow, it’s universal.

Graphicacy

The relationship between images and words

Graphicacy is the competence in dealing with images, creating them, interpreting them, and using them to think clearly.

For me, this goes beyond “illustrations.” Images don’t need text to have meaning. And images have moved far beyond being replicas of reality. Today, we use visuals as tools for insight: data visualizations, medical scans, satellite imagery, simulations, dashboards, maps. Even words rely on graphic form (letters, layout, spacing) to become readable.

The goal isn’t to choose images over words. The goal is to combine both intelligently so we can communicate and think clearly, especially when problems are complex.

Visual Thinking

Design literacy as a domain of cognition

To me, visual thinking (images, diagrams, visualization) isn’t just about making things look nice. It’s a domain of cognition , a real way humans understand, reason, and discover truth. It’s one of the oldest ways we made sense of life.

I’m seeing visuality and visual thinking become more recognized in institutions and organizations, especially as brands and products rely heavily on visuals to influence and educate. But I still think we have a long way to go.

This is where I draw a line between two types of design:

• Problem-solving design that tackles real needs and improves understanding and decision-making
• Self-centred design that is more about style, personal expression, and designer ego than outcomes

I want us to prioritise the first one. Investing in visual thinking makes design more useful across every field, not just more aesthetic.

Theory

Research and Documentation in Design

For me, this virtue covers the thinking, concepts, and research that explain why design works, how it affects people, and what principles should guide decisions. It includes how designers discuss and critique design, and how we generate evidence and new understanding.

Design is no longer a “weird hobby.” Design has earned its place in institutions, and I think we must maintain that tradition of documenting our journeys, our decisions, and our reasoning.

Theory itself may not be a virtue, but cultivating theoretical interest is. That means taking ideas seriously, questioning assumptions, building frameworks, and committing to research and critique.

Attention

Designing for freedom

Attention is now an economic resource. Platforms compete to capture and hold it, and AI makes this competition sharper because systems can personalize hooks at scale, predict what you’ll click, and keep feeding you more.

So design is no longer neutral. Every notification, feed, badge, streak, autoplay, infinite scroll, “recommended for you,” or AI nudge is shaping behaviour. You even see it in how many chat AIs push you to stay and go deeper, instead of simply fulfilling what you asked for and letting you move on.

My perspective is simple: designers should treat attention like something to protect, not something to extract. That means giving users real control, helping them stay intentional, not stuck. It means designing experiences that cultivate good habits in humans, instead of profiting from the bad ones.

For me, the future of “good design” is design that makes people more free not more dependent.