You can try to win a features arms race by offering everything under the sun. Or you can just focus on a couple of things and do ‘em really well and get people who really love those things to love your product. For little guys, that’s a smarter route.
When you choose that path, you get clarity. Everything is simpler. It’s simpler to explain your product. It’s simpler for people to understand. It’s simpler to change it. It’s simpler to maintain it. It’s simpler to start using it. The ingredients are simpler. The packaging is simpler. Supporting it is simpler. The manual is simpler. Figuring out your message is simpler. And most importantly, succeeding is simpler.
Maeda’s ten laws of simplicity
- Reduce
The Simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction - Organize
Organization makes a system of many appear fewer - Time
Savings in time feel like simplicity - Learn
Knowledge makes everything simpler - Differences
Simplicity and complexity need each other - Context
What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral - Emotion
More emotions are better than less - Trust
In simplicity we trust - Failure
Some things can never be made simple - The One
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful
(via mnmal)
Simplicity, purity and openness — an interview with Dieter Rams
Dieter Rams, 77, is one of Germany’s foremost industrial designers. Born in Wiesbaden, south-west Germany, in 1956 he began to design products for Braun, becoming the company’s head of product design and development in 1961, its design and product manager in 1968 and eventually its executive director in 1988, retiring in 1997.
Rams’ products are known for their pared back aesthetic and the inventive way they offer clear solutions to complex design problems. They are hugely influential to contemporary creatives, including Jonathan Ive of Apple, designer of the iMac, iPod, and iPhone.
Since 1971 Rams has lived in Kronberg, a town close to Frankfurt, Germany. ‘Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams’, a retrospective of his work, will be staged at the Design Museum, London, from Wednesday until March 7 2010.
There’s such a lot of things. Such a lot of unusable things. Most things are unnecessary and overdone. Look around. We cannot send to the Third World all the garbage we don’t need any more. We have to go back to more simplicity, longevity.
