I enjoy using Evernote and am a paid subscriber. I store a lot of notes and information in there, stuff that is very easy to share with my co-workers and others that need to know. It’s a great service and their CEO, Phil Libin, has helped start-ups everywhere by 1) meeting with many of them in person and 2) sharing a lot of data and information publicly that most won’t do.

This is exceptional in and of itself but I want to talk about something else about Evernote that might be exceptional as well: it’s lack of product design. In some ways, Evernote is a throw-back to an era when functionality was vastly more important than form as Evernote’s products are nothing special to look at and oddly rough around the edges in many cases.

It seems in the last few years that the emphasis on form has taken center stage. I’m not certain whether that is because Apple’s iPhone and aesthetic has been dominant. After all, Apple loves some good looking apps. Maybe aesthetic emphasis has to do with trying to stand out in a market of 700,000 apps and growing. But whatever the case, it seems that to get noticed these days your app has to be a beautiful, groundbreaking design. Oh, and be highly functional, too.