Jonathan Ive on simplicity

I love this quote from Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple Inc—it's so applicable to any kind of art or design or writing or thinking or....

"Why do we assume that simple is good? Because with physical products, we have to feel we can dominate them. As you bring order to complexity, you find a way to make the product defer to you. Simplicity isn't just a visual style. Its not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better was is to go deeper with the simplicity, to understand everything about it and how it's manufactured. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential."
—Jonathan Ive, p343

Unattributed photo.

Designer Quandry, Update!

Earlier this month one of my students found herself in a familiar design quandry...how to please a client who already had a design from a previous designer...discussed in this post.
Here's the update:

When I met up with my client, I addressed my concerns about using the poster design [the previous design, done by another designer] as a webpage layout, and he said it was fine to do that and that the poster designer is someone who works in the same place (that's a relief!) As for the decision of whether to go with my design or the poster design, it seems like the client definitely wants to stick with the poster design. My supervisor decided if that's what the client wants, then we'll just have to go with it.

Well, I guess that's the gist of it for my first client! I was definitely paranoid about whether it was okay to just copy another design, but I'm relieved to hear that the poster design belongs to the workplace.

Thank you for posting my question on your blog. It was very helpful to read comments from people who have experienced this many times.

Gran Poder

One of my former design students, Michael Dunn Caceres, is now a designer and photographer down in La Paz, Bolivia, where he took some unbelievably beautiful shots of the Fiesta del Gran Poder (Festival of the All-Powerful). The festival is a giant street party that celebrates Jesus and his part in the Trinity.

What's so cool about Michael's photographs is the use of black and white (in great contrast) for what you know is a totally colorful festival. This way his images focus on the composition and on the expressions of the celebrants. Great great stuff. More here on his flicker stream.
Now I just need to figure out which one I want a print of, and figure out how to get some South American mail! (update: they are available here, and mounted prints are well under $100! I am so getting one!)

50 things someone else knows

Maybe the answer to your question could be one of the 50 reasons not to date a graphic designer (via Lori Kent). I think I'm guilty of a lot of them...my favorite is number 47.

Wavy-gravy

I know what I'm doing this summer. Holland Cotter beat me to a review of Maya Lin's installation at Storm King in yesterday's New York Times—but wow!

I was lucky enough to see the stone wall by Andy Goldsworthy when it was first completed, and now I am totally going back to see this.

The Cat and Baby Show

I was sorry to miss that event (and you!), too! Was my night to mind the store, as it were.

Yes, Jasper John's directive "Take something; do something to it; then do something else to it" runs through my head at least once a day. It helps to keep pushing the problem one more step. So 1 + 1 + 1 = 4.

I love the distillation of the Pentagram approach: x=big numbers + Rubik's cube image manipulation. I've been thinking that I'm the only non-fan of that Michael Bierut Sak's Fifth Avenue logo.



I'd think it was cool if it was just their tissue paper pattern, but I'm not sure of the rework of the old logo into the bags and stuff, which is mostly what I see people carrying. He did that with his redesign of the Atlantic, too. Does that count as doing something + doing something else? Or just doing something? (And sadly this 2008 redesign comes just 7 years after the last one.)

I agree with you about the 19 20 21 site. Without context or seeing the presentation you saw, the site seems a bit labored and belabored. Sometimes Flash sites can just seem endless. But the use of the numbers is pretty spot on, if not a direct homage to the Massimo Vignelli calendar.

Word Project

When I teach my Introduction to Design class I often have the students illustrate a word using only typography. Sons & Sons has taken that project to the professional level, designing a typographic solution for Migrating Forms, a festival of new experimental film and video.
Meanwhile, Lev Kalman for Deep Vision Media has brilliantly used different color pages for Migrating Form's website navigation.