---
title: "Good design is easily recognizable. Everywhere."
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/1/3/good-design-is-easily-recognizable-everywhere.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/1/3/good-design-is-easily-recognizable-everywhere.html"
published: "2004-01-03T23:50:00"
updated: "2004-01-03T23:50:00"
tags: ["Off Topic"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Good design does not have to come from software to be acknowledged. Here's a good example: [via Edward Tufte ]"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Good design is easily recognizable. Everywhere.

By Roy Osherove January 3, 2004 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

**Historical article** · Originally published January 3, 2004; technical details may be outdated.

<table><tbody><tr><td><img alt="" decoding="async" height="1" loading="lazy" src="https://osherove.com/img/wb/eda5f7f8_www.edwardtufte.com_tufte_graphics_sidebar.jpg" width="25"></td><td><a name="responses"><p>Good design does not have to come from software to be acknowledged. Here's a good example:</p></a><table><tbody><tr><td><img alt="" decoding="async" height="606" loading="lazy" src="https://osherove.com/img/wb/85660511_www.edwardtufte.com_bboard_image.tcl_bboard_upload_id_54" width="601"></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table>

\[via [Edward Tufte](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00007Q&topic_id=1&topic=Ask%20E%2eT%2e)\]

## More in Off Topic

[All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

- Jan 7, 2004

    ### [Small cool news](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/1/7/small-cool-news.html)

- Jan 4, 2004

    ### [Disappointed with RSS Bandit](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/1/4/disappointed-with-rss-bandit.html)

- Jan 3, 2004

    ### [Moving to RSS Bandit: A simple review](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/1/3/moving-to-rss-bandit-a-simple-review.html)

- Dec 31, 2003

    ### [Another one bites the bullet: Santo has left the building](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/12/31/another-one-bites-the-bullet-santo-has-left-the-building.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/