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by Andrew Lam-Po-Tang
You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.
A quote from Antoine Saint-Exupery, best known for having written 'The Little Prince.'
Brilliant quote, huh? It came up in a presentation by Neil Gibb, an interaction designer, at the London Advance4Design forum (1). He gave a presentation about 'simplicity', a personal exhortation for designers to embrace simplicity as a guiding design principle or objective.
Afterwards, I wondered what it was that made this statement is so, soooo appealing. I think I have figured it out (sort of).
What works for me is the implied reduction in ambiguity. By stripping away the extraneous, the designer would be stripping away alternative interpretations, leaving only one 'true' meaning or purpose. What a relief to not have to work so hard at understanding something!
But then I thought, 'bollocks to true purpose!' Because every day children prove that anything, no matter how simple, can have multiple meanings that have nothing to do with the original or 'true' purpose. Boxes become forts, blankets and chairs become caves, cutlery becomes hidden treasure, friends become enemies and the lounge room becomes a mysterious, ancient land.
Sigh. As usual, I want my cake and I want to eat it too! But if the truth lies somewhere in between, does that mean I win both ways, or neither?
:)
(1) London Advance4Design is AIGA's UK interaction design community of practice. For more info, see:
| Feedback by Marc Morrow | Wednesday, 18 September 2002 |
"I have mixed feelings about this ideal. Certainly the best
corporate image design are those that can be easily equated with the
relevant company at a glance, and this is of course achieved through the
use of a minimal number of distinctive elements.
However, working in an area of the industry which requires me to oversee
designs that must adapt easily to a wide variety of reproduction processes
(such as spot-colour, four colour process, embroidery, metal-moulding,
digital imaging and so on), it becomes very apparent that many designers
confuse "simple" with "can't be bothered thinking about it".
Far too many simple designs are conceived with only one reproduction
process in mind, and that is usually four-colour process or digital
imaging, both of which allow for elements such as fine linework and colour
blends which are difficult or even impossible to reproduce through other
processes.
Certainly, we should keep corporate imaging simple, but let's not forget
that Design is not just about the artwork, or the chance to be clever.
It's about working extremely hard to produce a workable image.
x: 15
y: 5"
| Feedback by Ashley Ringrose | Tuesday, 9 July 2002 |
"I also read on http://www.kottke.org that "just enough is better". He used the example of a indian rug and said how can the "simple is better" rule be applied to this beautiful rug."
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The views expressed this article are not necessarily those of AGDA. Please note that the information in this article is the opinion of the author only. I can therefore accept no responsibility for actions taken on the basis of this information. Copyright Andrew Lam-Po-Tang (andrew@lam-po-tang com), 1998-2008. Permission is granted to freely copy this document in electronic form, or to print, for personal use. Reprinting for non-personal use will require the express permission of the author (which I will generally be very happy to give).
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