June 27th, 2008 Brief MorselsBookmark & Share
A couple weeks ago I was given a copy of John Maeda’s book “The Laws of Simplicty
” and it synthesized a lot of my previous design philosophies. The first law that he talks about, the law of reduce, is one that I have long believed to be one of the most important rules for designers. Design is about subtraction more than addition. This is one of the hardest things to teach because designers are creative and make things, but unless it solves the design problem, adding things to a design is more about ego.
Well, if you don’t own the book already you should snag a copy because I think it gets to the essence of how designers, technologists and business people should be approaching problems.
→ jubari @ September 7th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Good advice. People who are still not sure about buying the book should have a look at John Maeda’s TED-Talk, which focuses on some aspects of his “Laws of Simplicity”.
See: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/john_maeda_on_the_simple_life.html
Greets from Germany,
jubari
→ Paul @ February 9th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
While I do love designing creative graphics, I’m also becoming more and more a fan of simplicity in regards to web design (have always been an advocate of simplicity in logo design). Haven’t read the book, so thanks for the tip; I may have to pick a copy up :)
→ Zoheb Hussain @ April 13th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Nice blog…
i was searching for some typographic refrences…
i got ur website..
nice typography…
i liked it.
→ david @ July 15th, 2010 at 10:34 am
simplifying the design is the last phase of a project (leastways its rarely at the top of the clients list of priorities). & as many clients are the kind of people who turn up to a poker table with $5 & expect $10 worth of chips, its difficult enough secure funding for the main part of a project, let alone the ‘extras’
maybe one day someone will prove that being realistic is the best philosophy – & that accepting you get $100 worth of work for $100 works out better, overall, than pursuing the time-consuming & ultimately self-defeating strategy of trying to get $200 worth of work for $100
then if this happens – that people start being realistic about the basic aspects of work – they might become receptive to the more advanced stuff. like how spending an extra X% of time/money on a project – simplifying it – makes it better for everyone in the long run
(i’m not holding my breath)