John Darko
Everything that we use has been designed. From the moment we wake up, everything we lay our hands (and eyes) on has been designed by someone. A product designer will have considered the utility but also the form of your toothbrush, the shape of your coffee mug, the feel of your car’s steering wheel, your amplifier’s remote control, its volume knob, the shape of the chassis and its material make-up.
Our speakers might – when boiled down to bare essentials – be two or three drivers in a box but someone designed that box, its dimensions, the driver layout, the port’s position, the materials used and, in some cases, the wood veneer that wraps it.
Everything that we use has been designed.
And yet: “Looks don’t matter. It’s the sound quality that counts!” is the opinion we see expressed loudly and with a surprising degree of regularity in comment sections and on message boards. Are these people blind to their own aesthetic motivations? A DIY speaker with dangling wires and an exposed crossover still has an aesthetic.
Last month I polled the Darko.Audio YouTube audience with the question “How much do the looks of a hi-fi component influence your buying decision?”. 13,000 people responded as follows:
Only 7% of poll respondents believe themselves to be unmoved by the appearance of a hi-fi product and, at the other extreme, a mere 1% reckon that looks are everything. Fair enough — that’s their prerogative but the vocal minority are still a minority. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, away from the extremes, where the majority of respondents say that looks matter to some degree with a third of that 92% majority saying that the looks of a hi-fi product can make or break a purchasing decision. That’s interesting.
