Does Good Design have to be Simple?
TL;DR: No, but it sure helps.
While at university, I never really understood what good design looks like. Sometimes simple, straightforward buildings will be presented as the highest form of design. But some other times, those who create highly elaborate, almost chaotic beauty are deemed as the best in the field.
“Less is more.” – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Good design is as little as possible. Less, but better … Back to purity, back to simplicity.” – Dieter Rams
These quotes, often thrown around even outside of the design profession, and my learning experience at university brought me to the question: does good design have to be simple?
First, let’s clear one thing up. Whatever the answer to that question is, the converse isn’t true.
Simple design isn’t necessarily good.
A lot of beginners (me included) might have come to a temporary conclusion that simple is good. And then we design minimalist-looking objects, white-on-white, thinking that simplicity begets good design.
This is just not the case:
- Tadao Ando’s Piccadilly Gardens — minimal brutalist piece of architecture that’s out of place as the entrance to a public green space.
- 1978 Lancia Sibilo — a simplistic concept car that’s just plain ugly (the color doesn’t help).
Why, though? The answer, concerning design and architecture, is a long future post about what good architecture is. But, in short, good design have two requirements.
Go above and beyond basic requirements.
A building has to keep the rain out. A camera has to take good pictures. A text has to be readable.
Without fulfilling the basic qualities required of them, a design cannot be deemed good. But good design goes one step above.
The first iPhone was an example of wonderful, revolutionary design. It fulfills all its requirements — calling someone, texting, browsing, taking pictures, etc. And it does all that in a compact and elegant way.
It doesn’t cause unnecessary inconvenience. Everything is where it should be, intuitively. And it is pleasing to look at. Simply said, good design is usable and likable.
Have a clarity of concept.
The next thing might seem less relevant to non-designers. The concept. But anybody who’s had experience trying to create something out of nothing will know that a concept is a very powerful tool to have.
A concept is nothing more than a central organizing idea, upon which the design is built.
The following excerpt, while not explicitly referring to a design concept, explains it beautifully with an example:
There is no objective reality. There are no facts. There are no best products. All that exists in the world of marketing are perceptions in the minds of the customer or prospect. The perception is the reality. Everything else is an illusion.
Quote from The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
The concept is the perception we wish people have of our design. It could concern aesthetical qualities, but also usability, tone of language, sense of touch, and so much more.
In summary, good design has to be simple, specific, and consistent enough for anyone to grasp and enjoy.
How simplicity plays a role in design.
Thinking about simplicity helps the designer to focus on what actually matters. It helps set the boundaries of what is preferable, what’s unacceptable, and when it’s just good enough.
Simply adding new things and solutions will ultimately create a jumbled mess of mediocrity. We can look at the case of Evernote as a large-scale example of bad complexity that was developed over years.
I personally went through this mistake in one of my second semester project. Over the course of three months, I was reactively creating solutions to whatever problems the tutors pointed out each week.
The problem was that I was focusing on how to make it better, while forgetting what the project should be and why.
In the end, what I had was not an elegant, well functioning piece of design. Even though it fulfilled the requirements, it was unnecessarily complex, confusing, and it didn’t really say anything to anyone.
It was more like steel pipes and glass shards duct-taped together, while the original idea had been a bicycle.
What’s the conclusion?
There are bad designs that are simplistic, there are good designs that are complex.
Simple design is not a prerequisite of good design. But focusing on simplicity helps in creating good design.
Originally published on evanprananta.com.
