yes, i'm trying my hand at writing a book. Design is objective. Aesthetics are personal. And while you, as a designer, may have a more widely celebrated aesthetic sense, it's not enough to design well and persuade people. You have to understand the human psychology. Everything has a reason and a point, if you can deconstruct it. Here's the introduction snippet from my current project, The Psychology of Design: Answers, Not Aesthetic.
If you've ever seen the work of Leonardo da Vinci, you've seen how well he understood the human anatomy. When his work first emerged, it was stunning; no one had ever seen anything like it before. That's likely because at the time, it was illegal - punishable by death, in fact - to perform autopsies. We knew less about how the body worked after the fall of the Roman Empire than before, when the Romans and Greeks studied anatomy extensively. So in order for da Vinci to learn about the human body, he had to sneak off to graveyards at night, dig up cadavers, whisk them away to cut them up, then sew them up and replace them. And this was all before he ever touched the paintbrush to the canvas.
Da Vinci was right when he said, "Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication." Understanding the subtle musculature and bone structure may seem like a complex task, but when he was able to see out how fundamental pieces were put together, he realized that it was incredibly simple. Design is, fundamentally, simple, but understanding why and being able to explain it is not. If you've ever presented what you think is a really great design to clients who respond with something to the effect of, "We like green. Make it green. And make that bigger," you might find yourself searching for the right words to convince them otherwise. You may say they're wrong or their changes will ruin everything, but you can't quite explain yourself convincingly enough other than to conclude they should just trust you because that's why you were hired.
The goal of this book is to teach you how to explain design. You don't have to simply say you don't like the way something looks. By the end of this book, you'll be able to slice and dice your thoughts into easily digestible chunks of English words that designers will understand - or, if you're a designer, that your boss or clients will understand, even if they've never designed anything in their life. This book will teach you how to look at the world differently, not just in terms of design but in terms of how you perceive everything, understanding that even when something is pointless, there is a point, if you can deconstruct it.
On the surface, design may seem like a gray area. But if you look closely and deconstruct, you'll be able to pick out the several black and white building blocks with which you can't argue. And that's what you need in your design: something objective. Something that you can convincingly express to someone who's not you. Something so objective, in fact, that it's nearly impossible to disagree with. The principles of design, although seemingly emotional and subjective to some, are, in fact, humanistic and objective. Therefore, in order to understand why one design works and why another doesn't, you must understand and be able to explain the psychological and biological principles behind them.