This past weekend, I purchased two new mugs. It is not as if there was a shortage of these particular vessels in our home, it was simply because they were pretty. This morning my coffee tasted a little better.  My new mug is oversized with a larger handle, so not only did it hold more, it was also easier to handle and had a colorful floral pattern that I enjoyed. There is something to be said about having things that are designed with both aesthetics and function in mind.  When successful, as my mugs were, it just makes you feel good.\n\nEverything that we see and touch makes us feel a certain way. The more beautiful and functional things are, the more we appreciate them.  If we lived in a purely utilitarian world, where design was never utilized, the world as we know it would be boring, grey and unengaging. Design is everywhere you look, and the better the execution, the more you enjoy looking at it. From the architecture of Frank Gehry to a Phillip Starcke kitchen appliance to a Prada dress, people have used design to transcend their fields and create incredible beauty that actually works.\n\nThe same can be said for website design. When a design is successful, it is both nice to look at and functions well. With the explosion of new media and the internet, there has been much debate about function and aesthetics. There are some that say, it just has to function and be usable to as many people as possible; usually resulting in sites that are extremely under-designed and by most standards, basic. And on the other end, there are those that want only a visual experience ignoring all usability and best practice rules; resulting in hard to use navigation bars and user difficulty in finding key information. In both cases, each one needs what the other has in excess.\n\nWe love discussing this exact quandary here at Blue Daring; the dichotomy of things merging together to form something that is better as a whole.  I believe that design can be visually exciting and appealing as well as function well.  I would even argue that design can make things function better (i.e. simple and intuitive interactivity). This is what we do here at Blue Daring, we deliver solid work that blends beauty and function to make your company not only more attractive, but actually smarter.