Make the ordinary part work before asking decoration to make it special.

Decoration cannot rescue a thing that does not work. The chair nobody wants to sit in, the page that cannot be read, the meal that arrives cold and beautiful. Attention goes to the surface because that is the part people compliment, and because it is more enjoyable to add than to fix. Ordinary function is what actually gets used.

Take something you are making and check the plain part first. Can it be found, read, sat on, carried, understood. Get that right before you spend anything on the layer that makes it special, and you may find it needs less of that layer than you thought.