I was always under the impression that beauty is subjective, meaning that it is influenced by opinion, so different things can be beautiful to different people. This being said, I didn’t understand how someone could teach good design. If everyone views beauty differently, how can there be a standard for creating designs that are appealing to everyone?
This was before I began studying at Southeast Tech, of course. It turns out there are universal design principles used across the board. Before creating a design, you also need to keep in mind the requirements of the client as well as the target audience. Design is usually a result of decisions made by designers to solve a specific problem. So in this case, the design is considered good if it solves the problem
So to answer the question, good design is a mix of both. It is objective in the sense that it needs to follow the basic design principles and achieve the functionality for the goal of the design. On the other hand, the subjective aspect of design deals with the aesthetics and emotional connection, and what is considered good varies across the opinions of different types of people.