Stop Making
It Pretty

Three words. "Make it pretty." Seemed like a simple request. But those three words told me everything I needed to know about where the project was heading.

Not because the client was wrong for wanting things to look good. Of course they wanted that. Everyone does. The problem was what "pretty" actually meant in this context. It meant they didn't know what they wanted. And they were hoping that aesthetics would fill the gap where strategy should have been.

Pretty Is Not a Brief

When someone says "make it pretty," what they're really saying is: "I don't have the language to describe what I need, so I'm defaulting to the only design word I know."

It's not their fault. Most people haven't been trained to talk about design. They know what they like when they see it, but they can't articulate why they like it or what it should accomplish.

That's actually your job as a designer. Not to take the brief at face value, but to dig underneath it. What problem is this solving? Who is it for? What should someone do after they see this? What does success look like?

"Pretty" answers none of those questions.

The Decoration Instinct

There's a natural instinct when things feel unfinished to add more. More colour. More texture. More effects. More visual noise. It feels productive. It looks like progress.

But decoration without purpose is just clutter. And clutter actively works against the thing you're trying to communicate.

I've lost count of how many projects I've seen where the design got worse as it got "prettier." More gradients. More shadows. More fonts. Every addition moving further from clarity and closer to confusion.

The best design work I've ever done has been about taking things away. Removing the extra heading. Killing the background pattern. Reducing the colour palette from twelve colours to three. It feels counterintuitive, but restraint is what makes things clear.

Design Is Problem-Solving Wearing a Nice Shirt

Good design starts with a problem. Someone can't find the information they need. A product isn't selling because the packaging doesn't communicate value. A website has traffic but no conversions.

These are design problems. And they have design solutions. But the solutions aren't "make it prettier." The solutions are things like: restructure the information hierarchy. Clarify the value proposition. Reduce friction in the user journey.

The visual layer matters. Of course it does. But it's the last thing, not the first thing. It's the skin on the skeleton. If the skeleton is wrong, no amount of skin is going to fix it.

What I Do When Someone Says "Make It Pretty"

I don't push back. I don't lecture them on design thinking. I just ask questions.

"What's not working about this right now?" "Who needs to see this and what do you want them to do?" "If this works perfectly, what does that look like for your business?"

Nine times out of ten, the answers reveal the real brief. And the real brief is never "pretty." It's "clear." It's "trustworthy." It's "easy to understand." It's "makes us look like we know what we're doing."

Those are things you can design for. "Pretty" is not.

The Side Effect

Here's the thing that always surprises clients. When the design solves the actual problem, when the hierarchy is right and the messaging is clear and the layout guides people where they need to go, it looks good. Naturally. Without trying.

Because clarity is beautiful. Structure is elegant. Purpose is attractive.