[atoav]

As a former designer with a broad background (graphics, typography, print, web, product design) whenever I read something like this I get the feeling people generally have a misguided idea of what design is.

Many (bad) designers confuse what I would call styling with design. Design is a lot about functionality and how information is organized visually. These two core design points can only be copied if the underlying project is exactly the same in terms of underlying information. But even for two blogs about different topics the question which information needs to be presented how would be different — even if both blogs were using the browser's default CSS. This is the core of design.

Styling is finding colors, shapes proportions etc. All of this of course overlaps with the functional question and the question of organization of information — bigger buttons get more attention and all that — but ultimately you can slap more or less any style on any content. Whether it makes sense is a different question.

[andruby]

I like your description, and it resonates with how I see things.

A lot of people think of aesthetics when they hear "design". But design is about how things work. Everything we use was at some point designed by someone.

In our SaaS company we changed the role of Designers to Product Designers to help people understand it a little better.

[atoav]

I mean in the end aesthetics are intricately intertwined with how things are perceived and thus how they work.

There is only so much information a person can process at once, there are certain expectations where they would find things those can be met or sub erted, colors, font choice, all important for how information gets processed on the functional level.

So in the end design cannot exist with some degree of aesthetical choice, and the better designers are the better they are at choosing aesthetics that serve the functional choices (if that is the goal of their designs).

If you make it completely utilitarian it might become boring, and the function of a design in a SaaS company could also be to sell the product..