Good Design Is SIMPLE
Sometime last year, there was a big book sale event here in the city where I live, called Big Bad Wolf. My real purpose of going there was to expose my 6-year old daughter to a huge pile of books, and make her interested more in reading. Also, so she can browse a myriad of overpriced kid’s books for free, without a need for me to buy it. I still ended up buying her 1 book, which I think is worth its price.
So, let’s get back to the essence of this article. As I was browsing some books myself, I saw this very simple book, that was simply designed, with few content that really makes sense. It’s like a simple story with a real moral lesson at the end. (If you’re curious about its content, feel free to take a look here.)
Being partially involved in the field of design, I am amused to find this book beautiful, and effective, in a way that it caught my attention, and made me turn to the next page, and next, until I finished reading it all (for free). I’m a frugal person now, but if I had much budget at the time, I would definitely buy what she created, just for the mere reason that I appreciated their design.
Simplicity in design is what makes it effective. There was a saying I read or heard somewhere that says, good design is actually invisible. You would know that something is designed really well, when you experience it in a positive way, which can be translated into many variables depending on various use cases.
Anything should be designed in a way that it addresses below 2 items:
- Is this design appealing to our senses? (Aesthetics)
- Will I be able to accomplish what I need (goal) easily with this design? (Usability)
Aesthetics —
Any product should be designed in a way that in follows the basic design principles, as simply detailed by a New York based product designer, Melissa. I like how she simplified the principles into 4 items only, based on her background in architecture.
Usability —
With regards to a product’s usability, I like to refer to Dieter Ram’s 10 commandments of good design. As mentioned in the Essentialism book I’m currently reading, Dieter’s design criteria can be summarized by only a few words — “ Less but better” (or Weniger amber beset in German). Being an industrial designer for years at Braun, his design principles are clearly apparent in Braun’s many products.
Once the above items are carefully thought of, that design will create a lasting impression (memorable) to the user, just like how I can’t forget that DOT book I only read once.
As a designer, we may want to put a lot of elements to our design, out of our enjoyment of doing designing, that we forget to think about our user’s very simple needs. Design doesn’t have to be too complicated. Most of the time, the very simplest design is what captures the attention of most people.
If you notice most big brands, they have the simplest design applied to their products or brand. Why? They want to make their brand as memorable as possible to their users. A human brain can only process a few things at a time, so you can’t information-overload your user to make them love your product.
One example of simplicity in branding is of Taft Properties. I saw one of their tarpaulin banners along a construction site few months ago, having that big yellowish dot with a thick black O as border, and with only a few graphical elements of their properties (buildings, etc.) as background of that banner. I think it was mostly white (I was not able to take a photo of it back then). But, what I am trying to say is, they want everyone to see and remember them as that yellow & black dot or O. So, whenever you see a yellow / black dot, all you would associate that with is Taft Properties. Easy to remember right? Same scenario with InVision‘s pink square.
So, don’t stress yourself when creating a new design for your users. Who knows, what they really need is a simple design, which is easy to do for you.
It’s really true that less is more, and that less is better.
