Pinpointing exactly what makes a classic is hard to do. A great design manages to engage audiences, but a classic goes one step further. It somehow manages to transcend time and remain in the public's eye for years to come. But how does one make something that's truly timeless? Do you need the foresight to predict how audiences will react to your work in the future, or do you just get lucky? A quick look at just about any "Best movies of all time" list will yield the likes of Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. So how have these films become embedded in pop culture while several of their equally esteemed contemporaries got lost in the shuffle? Well, there are bound to be endless theories, so I'll take the plunge and provide my own.

In a scene from Tim Burton's Ed Wood, the titular B-movie director is confronted by a member of his production crew regarding a continuity issue that came up during their filming of Plan 9 from Outer Space, to which Wood responds, "Filmmaking is not about the tiny details. It's about the big picture!" Wood is being a little extreme when he opts to completely neglect the "tiny details" for the "big picture", but his sentiment nonetheless holds some insight. When looking at any great motion picture, the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. While audiences may remember individual scenes, bits of dialogue, and standout performances from the "classic" films they hold near and dear to their hearts, what they truly value about the movies they love is each of those movies as a whole, or in other words, the "big picture". However, there's a very good reason why Ed Wood is reviled as the worst director of all time, and, if Burton's quasi-biopic is anything to go by, it's because he ignored the tiny details. Plan 9 from Outer Space is rife with a ridiculous story, laughable dialogue, and poor acting. Just because the big picture works, it doesn't mean the details should be overlooked because the details add up and impact the big picture, for better or worse (generally for worse when speaking of Ed Wood). Thus, what makes a design a true classic is the designer's ability to avoid working solely at the micro or macro level; they key is to find a balance between the two.