Not really. Think of design as the core, while aesthetics is the chrome. In my opinion, design has purpose. Something is "designed" to do something. You know, a

Not really. Think of design as the core, while aesthetics is the chrome. In my opinion, design has purpose. Something is "designed" to do something. You know, as in 'intelligent design'. Take an example here. In this website, which what people call a github for recipes [0], note how the recipe pages are made. The recipe page is an example of a high design, low aesthetics page. It was designed to do one thing and do one thing well: display a recipe. It was designed to draw attention to the FORK button, because that's what the aim of Fork the Cookbook is all about: to get people forking recipes. It is lacking in aesthetics. It's not that beautiful to look at honestly, but in my opinion, it does its work well in doing its task. [0] http://forkthecookbook.com/recipes/white-chocolate-passion-fruit-truffles-846fe http://forkthecookbook.com/recipes/white-chocolate-passion-f... disclosure: I designed the layout for Fork the Cookbook