Onur Cobanli explains:
Great design is timeless; but what is timely; the core idea about being timely is about the fact that many consumer goods, products, interfaces, graphics, almost all artifacts are effected by fashion and concurrent trends; indeed all good design should be compliant with fashion and concurrent trends because fashionable and trendy things are what people desire and will generally demand, therefore helping fulfil the good design one of its hidden agendas; to create profit for its creators. On the other hand, we are talking about great design not just good design; and when you come up with a great design, you have a category defining, radical innovation type of artifact; and since you define the category, you may as well define the trends and style of that new category; you define the fashion; and also, you are not bound as much from existing trends and fashion. That’s one perspective why good design seems futuristic. But that is actually not what I mainly mean, the thing is that great design, unlike good design, should always be designed to last a long time; if good design lasts ten years, great design should last for thousand years (or more if material science allows); imagine the spearheads used by hunters many millennia ago, they have the right shape and also the right material; they also last a lot; that’s a great design, now imagine you are at the period where the first spearheads are made; everyone else has edge-sharpened wooden sticks, you come up with your super fancy shiny space age weapon – the metal spear; that’s good, that’s futuristic.