“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” wrote Leonardo Da Vinci. He would paint over work that didn’t meet up with his expectations. Not surprisingly, Steve Jobs adopted da Vinci’s maxim in designing Apple computers.
Simplicity is the reduction of complexity. It unclutters the multiplicity of crayons and fence-sitting gray space in the middle and replaces objects with mere black and white.
Simplicity comes from revision
Simplicity retains the essence and deletes the rest. Take a look at the sequence of Picasso’s drawing of a bull. He pairs down the bull from full detail down to its fundamental shape.
The simplicity of design directly relates to the clarity of design — retained and kept implicit is the main thing that gets featured in the work.
Only when we remove the excess can we appreciate the beauty of simplicity. What results only appears natural because all the explaining was wiped our during reduction.
The experts know what to ignore.
3 responses
It takes a lot of work to make things simple but it’s totally worth it. It only seems so obvious after the fact.
“Once we remove the excess, we can retain what’s essential. But the final result appears intuitive because all the explaining was done in its reduction.”
I love this line and agree that we can learn to reduce our lives to the basics. Doing so helps reduce stress. The less complicated we make any situation, the better the outcome in my opinion.