ENVY ENGINEERS. WHEN THEIR WORK IS

Idone, nobody comes along and tells them they should have made that valve just a touch longer or those bolts a different colour. Engineering is a science. It can be measured, evaluated, and, ultimately, proven to work. Or not, in the case of Virgin Galactic. But no matter how much training designers undertake, or how much experience and success they offer, their results will always be questioned by the unqualified, quoting the old adage that style is just a matter of personal taste. Well, yes and no. The argument that beauty is in the eye of the beholder is a phrase I hear regularly, usually as a defence for something hideously ugly. Style is subjective, they expand, and, therefore, can’t be generalized. This is utter hogwash. While on an individual level everyone’s tastes are indeed different, there is nonetheless a mass consensus about stuff most people find repulsive, along with things generally considered to be of great beauty. If not, then Cindy Crawford wouldn’t have a career, and Ferrari would be out of business.

Those basic aesthetic values are instinctive, and are deeply entrenched in the rules of nature. It’s in the interest of our own self-preservation that we can distinguish between the harmless and the harmful — an aggression that’s exploited to full effect by motorcycle designers. Frowning fox-eye headlights, a low head and hunched shoulders like a bull about to charge, a high pointed tail like a scorpion’s sting — you get the picture. The strength of that consensus can be measured, and, more importantly for the consumer product industry, predicted. So

style is objective. If not, we designers would be redundant, along with Ms Crawford.

There are numerous examples of people with downright bad taste, although, fortunately, they rarely start trends — with a few exceptions like Tracy Emin and John Waters, who have made careers out of it. For the rest of us, there is a general consensus of aesthetic right and wrong; of what works and what doesn’t.