On Design

Rams is a legend in the industry because his products spoke functionality with form. He is a German industrial designer. Braun design team is where he made a huge impact in electrical objects such as radio and home appliances (TP 1 & 3 radio was famous, calculator, furniture). Braun's products were everywhere in every part of home! Braun's products were domestic in its era. His products were functional, long-lasting, high quality, and highly aesthetic. Some products hadn't changed in many years and didn't need to be replaced. They weren't emotionless. It had emotional relationship.

Rams was angry when Braun was acquired by Gilette. Having to constantly change design to meet marketing need. He had to report to almost 10 CEOs when Braun got acquired. "If you don't have someone who stands behind you, then you can forget it." In 1995, he left design department. In fact, he was pushed out and given a title, “Executive Director, Corporate Identity.” Finally, he left in 1997. Then got a bit involved with Vitsoe. The philosophy was adopted—Living better, with less, that lasts longer.

The Rams philosophy is studied by many students including Naoto Fukasawa from Tokyo and Jonathan Ive (one of the original Apple's designer). They used Rams as a role model and inspiration. iPod was hugely inspired by it—icons, graphics, grid system and aesthetics.

Rams was heavily influenced by Japanese culture. His home garden is Japanese inspired which he is lived in for over 50 years. Even cutting trees is design. And they need to be cut for maintenance. The Zen philosophy stands out in his work.

Visiting Japan, I was immediately impressed by the simplicity.

This influenced his own philosophy which sums down to:

Less, but better.

Rams thoughts on what a good design should be and everything that revolves around it:

• Design can have a strong orientation.
• Design should be an answer to solving a problem not making more problems.
• One of the core principles of product was letting it do the job and get out of the way.
• Product design is the total configuration of a product—its forms, color, material and construction. You cannot understand good design if you can't understand people.
• For design to be understandable by everyone it should be simple as possible. The time of thoughtless design for thoughtless consumption is over. It should be less, but better.
• To overcome mediocrity, Rams recommends young designers to be highly collaborative, who think beyond what they are responsible for on a daily basis. Designers who think—“what will our society look like in the future?” will be better off in their design path.
• We don't need anything faster. We need something more sensible and better. Auto industry wants faster and faster and that is why Rams is not interested with auto industry. Even Tesla is not that impressive to him. The problem is beyond energy. It has to deal with traffic and the environment. We need to rethink the transportation system not just the technology. This is an emphasis on systems thinking.
• If he had to revisit his origin of design, he would focus on architecture. Shaping our environment (urban development) is the most important thing. It starts with designing the landscape not designing the machine. Design in media is increasingly associated with beautification. He hates the term beautification. We never just wanted to make something beautiful. We wanted to make things better, as he has always wanted. What we need is less, but better. Rams does not want to design a single object, but want to design the entire environment (the entire system).
• Design is politics. Creating a world that is a better place and to give people freedom.
• Engineering can be harsh at times with new ideas. The engineering team says, “Ugh, typical designers...we can't do that!” But those same ideas are no longer novelty. They become commercial products soon.
• On logos, he always put a small one in the back. The battle he ultimately lost with the last CEO because he wanted large logos in the front. Rams argued when you enter a room you don't shout and say, “I am so-and-so.” You do it quietly. Just imagine when you have many products, it irritates and overwhelm people.
• The product graphics are very important.
• Consistency matters because it speaks the same language. Don't confuse people.
• It is better to improve one thing than to be constantly forced to come up with something new which is often not new but is formalistically superimposed. That's why he prefers the term re-engineering. Thinking from inside to outside not the other way. Apple is a great example of this philosophy.
• Good design just happens, it's an outgrowth of our education. It's an evolution after another.
• Design doesn't just mean expensive.
• Design should not deal with things like confusion.
• Everything has a story. Even the objects he doesn't like, have stories.
• It worries him that people are no longer looking each other in the eye. They are staring at their tablets and walking across the streets like that. It is significant how humanity has changed. Contemporary products are no longer serving humanity.
• Technology is moving faster every day. Think of all the computers. If you get a computer today, it's already obsolete tomorrow. Today no industry is interested in improving. This is also a phenomenon—it's better to just buy a new one. We have to get away from the "un-culture" of abundance because there is no future with so many redundant things. He thinks that all this digitization is becoming more and more a part of our life. He thinks it diminishes our ability to experience things. We have to be careful now, that we rule over the digital world, and not ruled by it. For example, there should be no light during the day. Use natural light even during the cloudy days. Use natural materials, no paint brushes. Craftsmanship should stand out without layering anything on the top. This could be a problem however people who like colors.
• Architecture and product design have in common. It's about the selection of materials, it's about proportions, the use of color and, last but not least, functionality. But it is also about emotional approaches, about signfulness, about meanings. Both professions have intersections with each other.
• In my opinion, a long product cycle is a proven means of limiting a senseless and fast overconsumption. However, products should not only last technically long and be repairable, but also visually. A good design can deliver. In addition to my ten theses, you should also read my explanations. Many designers have undoubtedly referred to these theses. Jony Ive mentioned them in many interviews, including Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa. They took a close look at the Braun products and learned from them and developed their own attitude. These were not simple takeovers of designs, but intelligent further developments.
• We have to get involved in fewer things, but specifically more useful, more useful, more environmentally friendly, more universal and also fascinating. In my opinion, this is the key if we want to change thoughtless consumption into responsible consumption. Attraction must refer to new compelling concepts and functions, not to the beautiful appearance of a design for superfluous buying incentives. An ethically justifiable design must of course also be present in the minds of the company management. Because the designer does not alone decide what is produced. Students of business administration learn a lot about marketing, but they are not taught the characteristics of good design. This means that the corporate goals should ask not only profit and growth but also about the meaningfulness of their products. Design should actually become a mandatory subject for economists.
• I don't think that everything used to be better, as older people like to read. The saying already existed in a similar way with Aristotle in antiquity. For my generation, there was initially only hope for a better future, because the recent past had left a disaster with war and National Socialism. It was about cleaning up not only in the physical sense, but also in the mental. We have understood a better, unrepresentative, not sentimentally design as a relief, as a liberation from the ballast of the past. The sixties were then a gigantic upheaval and departure. However, it was also the beginning of ever greater consumption. Our reaction to this was to design reasonable and durable products with objectivity. However, today's time is very worrying to me. The climate catastrophe is no longer undeniable, yet the cars are getting bigger, not less, but more and more consumed. Putin is waging a bloody war of aggression against Ukraine, the USA and China have gone from economic cooperation to political confrontation. I am sometimes very forward-looking.
• I don't use one or the other. All this is very suspicious to me and I don't want to sit in front of the computer for hours. I prefer to cut my bonsais in the garden and think about it. This also includes intensive book and newspaper readings. In my opinion, the old media still work quite well, if not even better in some respects. However, digitality certainly plays a major role today. Models can be produced much faster than before. But fast renderings also tempt too little thought-out designs, because everything looks so beautiful at first glance. Designers should always first think about whether their designs really mean progress. Design starts in the head, not on the computer. And putting first ideas on paper by hand is still a veritable procedure in my opinion.
• Consider the worldwide littering caused by thoughtless product design.
• A system is better than a single element" and that "good design is the overall configuration of a product.
• Modularity is still a current topic. My shelf can always be adapted to new room situations and supplemented with new modules. The system is compatible with all previous elements. You don't have to dispose of anything when you move. Modules were part of Greek antiquity as well as part of the prefabricated buildings of the 20th century. Century. However, the latter were mostly poorly made, perhaps with the exception of the settlements of the New Frankfurt in the 1920s. The proportions and the details are right. Conseled modules should result in a coherent, harmonious overall form. If you screw two armchairs from my 620 system together, then it looks like a sofa, not like two single armchairs screwed together, even though they are.
• Art has its own principles and they are certainly very diverse. Without a doubt, I like visual arts as art, but not as artificial design. For me, a concentrated art that you look into for a long time is better than an overwhelming one. I wouldn't have felt very comfortable in the Baroque. As you know, postmodernism was not my thing either, although I appreciated representatives like Ettore Sottsass humanly. In all times and styles, there have been good and less good productions. I have always been interested in the respective design quality. In the Baroque and even in the architectural historicism of the late 19th century. Century. The Alte Oper in Frankfurt has quite creative conciseness. However, today's industrial products for long-term use should not be embellished with ornamentation. You can quickly get tired of that. And then it is disposed of.
• I don't hate the word design, but it's inflated, from nail design to jeans design. I would find the word design more appropriate, also internationally. In a lecture, you were once asked by a listener what advice you would give to a young designer. Their advice was: "Find the right people to work with, people who think beyond what they are responsible for in their daily work and who think about what our society will look like in the future." Can you explain this great advice in more detail? He actually says it all. Designers are not independent artists. Designers must above all be able to work in a team and speak, with colleagues, with entrepreneurs and also with the marketing specialists. Nobody designs convincing solutions for industrial design alone. And you should walk through the world with your eyes open. You mentioned that you would have liked to have a career as a landscape architect. Do you have any other unrealized projects, be it in the field of design or otherwise? I stand on the topics of landscape planning and urban design and what I have said about it.
• Designers started to reject Ram's principles but with climate change, Rams is back. He was vocal about his actions impacting the planet in 90s. He paused and asked—“Am I part of the problem? I am making all molding and plastic stuff.” That is when 10 design principles came from.
  • Good design is innovative. The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.
  • Good design makes a product useful. A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.
  • Good design is aesthetic. The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we use every day affect our person and our well-being. But only well-executed objects can be beautiful.
  • Good design makes a product understandable. It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product talk. At best, it is self-explanatory.
  • Good design is unobtrusive. Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.
  • Good design is honest. It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.
  • Good design is long-lasting. It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society.
  • Good design is thorough down to the last detail. Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the user.
  • Good design is environmentally-friendly. Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.
  • Good design is as little design as possible. Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.
• “Less, but better” is not just a design concept, it's also about our behavior. Less would be better everywhere. Rams principles are not about principles, but about attitude. Rams design principles have influences so many which focuses on removing visual clutter and living with what you need.

His advice to the next generation of designers:

Keep your eyes wide open when you are walking in the city, neighborhoods. Don't trust everything the teachers tell you, because it's not all correct.

How important is design in protecting our future and the planet? True innovation are rare these days. It seems to me that the term "design" is mushrooming. Design has become a synonym for a backdrop, for beautiful appearance, for the stylish, and I fear we could lose our orientation at a point in time when orientation is needed as never before.

People are anxious about the future. Look at America with this new President. Increasing fear. The last thing we need is fear and anxiety. Politicians are obviously incapable of removing that fear. But most of my colleagues—architects, urban planners or designers—they are capable of doing this. Design only works when it really seeks to achieve something for humanity.

It is no secret that the real world in which the designer functions is not the world of art, but the world of buying and selling. For sales, and not design are the raison d’etre of any business organization. Unlike the the salesman, however, the designer’s overriding motivation is art: art in the service of business, art that enhances the quality of life and deepens appreciation of the familiar world.

Design is a problem-solving activity. It provides a means of clarifying, synthesizing, and dramatizing a word, a picture, a product, or an event. A serious barrier to the realization of good design, however, are the layers of management inherent in any bureaucratic structure. For aside from the sheer prejudice or simple unawareness, one is apt to encounter such absurdities as second guessing, kow-towing, posturing, nit-picking, and jockeying for position, let alone such buck-passing institutions as the committee meeting and the task force. At issue, it seems, is neither malevolence nor stupidity, but human frailty.

The smooth functioning of the design process may be thwarted in other ways, by the imperceptive executive, who in matters of design understands neither his proper role nor that of the designer; by the eager but cautious advertising man whose principal concern is pleasing his client; and by the insecure client who depends on informal office surveys and pseudo-scientific research to deal with questions that are unanswerable and answers that are questionable.

Unless the design function in business bureaucracy is so structured that direct access to the ultimate decision-maker is possible, trying to produce good work is very often an exercise in futility. Ignorance of the history and methodology of design — how work is conceived, produced, and reproduced — adds to the difficulties and misunderstandings. Design is a way of life, a point of view. It involves the whole complex of visual communication: talent, creative ability, manual skill, and technical knowledge. Aesthetics and economics, technology and psychology are intrinsically relate to the process.

One of the more common problems which tends to create doubt and confusion is caused by the inexperienced and anxious executive who innocently expects, or even demands, to see not one but many solutions to a problem. These may include a number of visual and/or verbal concepts, an assortment of layouts, a variety of pictures and color schemes, as well as a choice of type styles. He needs the reassurance of numbers and the opportunity to exercise his personal preferences. He is also most likely to be the one to insist on endless revisions with unrealistic deadlines, adding to an already wasteful and time-consuming ritual. Theoretically, a great number of ideas assures a great number of choices, but such choices are essentially quantitative. This practice is as bewildering as it is wasteful. It discourages spontaneity, encourages indifference, and more often than not produces results which are neither distinguished, interesting, nor effective. In short, good ideas rarely come in bunches.

The designer who voluntarily presents his client with a batch of layouts does so not out prolificacy, but out of uncertainty or fear. He thus encourages the client to assume the role of referee. In the event of genuine need, however, the skillful designer is able to produce a reasonable number of good ideas. But quantity by demand is quite different than quantity by choice. Design is a time-consuming occupation. Whatever his working habits, the designer fills many a wastebasket in order to produce one good idea. Advertising agencies can be especially guilty in this numbers game. Bent on impressing the client with their ardor, they present a welter of layouts, many of which are superficial interpretations of potentially good ideas, or slick renderings of trite ones.

Frequent job reassignments within an active business are additional impediments about which management is often unaware. Persons unqualified to make design judgements are frequently shifted into design-sensitive positions. The position of authority is then used as evidence of expertise. While most people will graciously accept and appreciate criticism when it comes from a knowledgeable source, they will resent it (openly or otherwise) when it derives solely from a power position, even though the manager may be highly intelligent or have self-professed “good taste.” At issue is not the right, or even the duty, to question, but the right to make design judgement. Such misuse of privilege is a disservice to management and counterproductive to good design. Expertise in business administration, journalism, accounting, or selling, though necessary in its place, is not expertise in problems dealing with visual appearance. The salesman who can sell you the most sophisticated computer typesetting equipment is rarely one who appreciates fine typography or elegant proportions. Actually, the plethora of bad design that we see all around us can probably be attributed as much to good salesmanship as to bad taste.

Deeply concerned with every aspect of the production process, the designer must often contend with inexperienced production personnel and time-consuming purchasing procedures, which stifle enthusiasm, instinct, and creativity. Though peripherally involved in making aesthetic judgements (choosing printers, papermakers, typesetters and other suppliers), purchasing agents are for the most part ignorant of design practices, insensitive to subtleties that mean quality, and unaware of marketing needs. Primarily and rightly concerned with cost-cutting, they mistakenly equate elegance with extravagance and parsimony with wise business judgement.

These problems are by no means confined to the bureaucratic corporation. Artists, writers, and others in the fields of communication and visual arts, in government or private industry, in schools or churches, must constantly cope with those who do not understand and are therefore unsympathetic to their ideas. The designer is especially vulnerable because design is grist for anybody’s mill. “I know what I like” is all the authority one needs to support one’s critical aspirations.

Like the businessman, the designer is amply supplied with his own frailties. But unlike him, he is often inarticulate, a serious problem in an arena in which semantic difficulties so often arise. This is more pertinent in graphic design than in the industrial or architectural fields, because graphic design is more open to aesthetic than to functional preferences.

Stubborness may be one of the designer’s admirable or notorious qualities (depending on one’s point of view) — a principled refusal to compromise, or a means to camouflage inadequacy. Design cliches, meaningless patterns, stylish illustrations, and predetermined solutions are signs of such weakness. An understanding of the significance of modernism and familiarity with the history of design, painting, architecture, and other disciplines, which distinguish the educated designer and make his role more meaningful, are not every designer’s strong points.

The designer, however, needs all the support he can muster, for his is a unique but unenviable position. His work is subject to every imaginable interpretation and to every piddling piece of fact- finding. Ironically, he seeks not only the applause of the connoisseur, but the approbation of the crowd.

A salutary working relationship is not only possible but essential. Designers are not always intransigent, nor are all purchasing agents blind to quality. Many responsible advertising agencies are not unaware of the role that design plays as a communication force. As for the person who pays the piper, the businessman who is sympathetic and understanding is not altogether illusory. He is professional, objective, and alert to new ideas. He places responsibility where it belongs and does not feel insecure enough to see himself as an expert in a field other than his own. He is, moreover, able to provide a harmonious environment in which goodwill, understanding, spontaneity, and mutual trust — qualities so essential to the accomplishment of creative work — may flourish.

Similarly, the skilled graphic designer is a professional whose world is divided between lyricism and pragmatism. He is able to distinguish between trendiness and innovation, between obscurity and originality. He uses freedom of expression not as a license for abstruse ideas, and tenacity not as bullheadedness but as evidence of his own convictions. His is an independent spirit guided more by an “inner artistic standard of excellence”(1) than by some external influence. At the same time as he realizes that good design must withstand the rigors of the marketplace, he believes that without good design the marketplace is a showcase of visual vulgarity.

The creative arts have always labored under adverse conditions. Subjectivity emotion, and opinion seem to be concomitants of artistic questions. The layman feels insecure and awkward about making design judgments, even though he pretends to make them with a certain measure of know-how. But, like it or not, business conditions compel many to get inextricably involved with problems in which design plays some role.

For the most part, the creation or effects of design, unlike science, are neither measurable nor predictable, nor are the results necessarily repeatable. If there is any assurance, besides faith, a businessman can have, it is in choosing talented, competent, and experienced designers.

Meaningful design, design of quality and wit, is no small achievement, even in an environment in which good design is understood, appreciated, and ardently accepted, and in which profit is not the only motive. At best, work that has any claim to distinction is the exception, even under the most ideal circumstances. After all, our epoch can boast of only one A.M. Cassandre.

• Words such as design, form, beauty, artistic, creative, and graphic are hard to design as it involves subjective interpretation.
• Design focuses more on conception than it does on execution. The design of an idea might be conceived by a designer but it cannot come to fruition without the skills of a printer or a stone cutter.
• Graphic design is essentially about visual relationships. It is the designer's job to select and fit the material together and make it interesting.
• Form and function is the integration of the beautiful and usefulness.
• Designer experiences, perceives, analyzes, organizes, symbolizes, synthesizes; considers spectator's feelings; draws upon instincts and intuition; must go through rigorous mental exercise.
• The designer is primarily confronted with three classes of material: a) the given material: product, copy, slogan, logotype, format, media, production process; b) the formal material: space, contrast, proportion, harmony, rhythm, repetition, line, mass, shape, color, weight, volume, value, texture; c) the psychological material: visual perception and optical illusion problems, the spectators’ instincts, intuitions, and emotions as well as the designer’s own needs.
• If there is vagueness in problem statement, it is the designer's job to restate the problem. Driving clarity is essential!
• Since graphic design deals with spectator, it is the goal of the designer to be persuasive or at least informative. Painters need not concern with this since a painting is open to interpretation.
• Trademark and logo are symbols. There are good symbols and bad symbols. The flag is a symbol of a country. The cross is a symbol of a religion. A trademark is created by a designer but made by a corporation.
• Stripes draw attention. They are memorable. Nature has created stripes (Zebras). They are effective.
• Ideas do no need to be esoteric to be original or exciting. Originality is related more to the unexpected idea than to some flamboyant or peculiar technique. To defamiliarize the commonplace, to see it as if were for the first time, is the artist's goal.
• The artist is a collector of things imaginary or real. He accumulates things with the same enthusiasm that a little boy stuffs his pockets. The scrap heap and the museum are embraced with equal curiosity. He takes snapshots, makes notes and records impressions on tablecloths or newspapers, on backs of envelopes or matchbooks. Why one thing and not another is part of the mystery, but he is omnivorous.
• Repetition is an effective way of achieving unity. Repetition also means remembrance.
• Humor is misunderstood and plays a significant role in design process and artifacts. Plato, in The Republic declares: Therefore do not use compulsion, but early education be rather a sort of amusement.
• The deployment of any visual image must begin with some tangible idea or conscious.
• Collage and montage draws spectators engagement because it requires personal discovery and exploration on what an artist is trying to convey. The value of audience participation is critical!
• Type matter involves readability. However, this function by a designer is taken too literally and overemphasized at the expense of style and individuality.
• Symmetry offers the spectator too simple and too obvious a statement. It offers little or no intellectual pleasure, no challenge. With asymmetric, designer is able to achieve great interest.
• In his writings specifically around typography, he puts emphasizes on there is no such thing as American font. A long-standing debate in many disciplines. American type is the combination of many geographies, culture and people.
• Meaningless solutions are produced when too much emphasize is placed on freedom and self-expression. Conversely, meaningful solutions are produced with defined limits. The latter is the instinct of play and will most likely yield novel solution. The rules are the means to the end, the conditions the player must understand thoroughly and work in order to participate. Without specific formal limitations and without the challenge of play, both teacher and student and teacher cannot help but be bored. The student has the illusion of creating great art in an atmosphere of freedom, when in fact, the designer is handicapped by the absence of certain disciplines which would evoke ideas and make playing with those ideas possible and interesting.
• Rand lists number of design exercises to work up your design muscle: crossword puzzle, the tangram, hokusai's drawing, chinese characters, the modular, the grid system, mason's mark, tatami, albers, cubist collages, matisse, picasso, mu ch'i, the photogram, piet zwart, japanese craftsman.
• Taboos and prejudices have long created limiting barriers to experimentation and to meaningful work in the arts, that is against the color black. However, the color black has many virtues. It is perfect for contrasting. Looking around us, nature has many elements of black. In Japanese painting, black (sumi) is often the only color employed.
• Together black and white act as complementary colors. Bright light reflected by the white area nullifies the reflected light from the black area. This makes the black seem blacker and white more brilliant.
• The field of packaging include materials, construction, and application. The Chanel packaging and design is an excellent study. In a well designed package, the designer does not seek to exploit consumer's visual memories and attachments by sentimental distortion but to express his objective appreciation of the fact that people do have strong affective reaction to things.
• The last two chapters Politics of Design and Integrity and Invention are worth re-reading. Rand worked with large organizations when design was at its infancy, so he knows how design was perceived in the world of commercialization. I have both chapters filled with annotations and notes. There is a lot of wisdom in them.

• A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense.
• The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing. Instead of pictures for the drawing-room, electric gadgets for the kitchen. There should be no such thing as art divorced from life, with beautiful things to look at and hideous things to use. If what we use every day is made with art, and not thrown together by chance or caprice, then we shall have nothing to hide.
• When the objects we use every day and the surroundings we live in have become in themselves a work of art, then we shall be able to say that we have achieved a balanced life.
• Design came into being in 1919, when Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus at Weimar. Part of the prospectus of this school reads: s'The function of art has in the past been given a formal importance which has severed it from our daily life; but art is always present when a people lives sincerely and health. 'Thus our job is to invest a new system of education that may lead to a complete knowledge of human needs and a universal awareness of them.'...What Gropius wrote is still valid. Tis first school of design did tend to make a new kind of artist, an artist useful to society because he helps society to recover its balance, and not to lurch between a false world to live one's material life in and ideal world to take moral revenge in.
• The vase once had an extremely common use. Most probably it was used for cooking-oil. It was made by a designer of those times, when art and life went hand in hand and there was no such thing as a work of art to look at and just any old thing to use.
• The greatest freedom comes from the greatest strictness. — Paul Valéry
• When the objects we use every day and the surroundings we live in have become in themselves a work of art, then we shall be able to say that we gave achieved a balanced life.
• To understand means to be capable of doing. — Goethè
• People haven’t got time to stop in the street, size a poster up, see what it refers to and then decide whether or not it interests them. Communication must be instant and it must be exact.
• When one studies something characteristic of a people it is wise to look at its best side, at least if one wants to learn anything. Ugly things are ugly in much the same way the world over. Only the best can teach us, and the best of anything is individual. Each country excels in some things, and in the rest is just the same as other countries: mediocre.
• The stylist works by contrast. After a season of violet, one can predict a season of yellow.
• It is certainly quite wrong to read a poem in a hurry, as if it were a telegram.
• What is a car, for many people, if not a piece of travelling sculpture?
• As long as art stands aside from the problems of life it will only interest a very few people.
• What then is this thing called Design if it is neither style nor applied art? It is planning: the planning as objectively as possible of everything that goes to make up the surroundings and atmosphere in which men live today. This atmosphere is created by all the objects produced by industry, from glasses to houses and even cities. It is planning done without preconceived notions of style, attempting only to give each thing its logical structure and proper material, and in consequence its logical form.
• By designing without any stylistic or formal preconceived notions, and tending towards the natural formation of things, one gets the essence of a product. This means using the most appropriate materials of the correct thickness, reducing working hours to a minimum, combining a number of functions in one element, making all attachments simple, using as few different materials as possible for each single object, trying to abolish the need for finishing off in detail, doing any necessary lettering during the original pressing, and bearing in mind that the object should take up as little storage space as possible and should assemble itself automatically when ready for use.
• ‘I TAO PI PU TAO’: If the idea is there, the brush can spare itself the work. (Ancient rule of Chinese painting.)
• An artist is a man who digests his own subjective impressions and knows how to find a general objective meaning in them, and how to express them in a convincing form. — Maxim Gorky
• A poem only communicates if read slowly: only then does it have time to create a state of mind in which the images can form and be transformed.
• Any knowledge of the world we live in is useful, and enables us to understand things that previously we did not know existed.
• Concern yourself with things before they come into existence. — Tao Te-ching
• Naturally, this puts an end to the already tarnished image of the work of art as a rare and even unique thing, independent of what it expresses.
• According to an ancient Chinese saying, infinity is a square without corners.
• We therefore have an object that is absolutely useless to man, an object good for nothing better than being looked at, or at the most sniffed (though it seems that some producers have now invaded the market with roses that do not even have the virtue of scent). This is an object without justification, and one moreover that may lead the worker to think futile thoughts. It is, in the last analysis, even immoral.
• Today it has become necessary to demolish the myth of the ‘star’ artist who only produces masterpieces for a small group of ultra-intelligent people. It must be understood that as long as art stands aside from the problems of life it will only interest a very few people. Culture today is becoming a mass affair, and the artist must step down from his pedestal and be prepared to make a sign for a butcher’s shop (if he knows how to do it). The artist must cast off the last rags of romanticism and become active as a man among men, well up in present-day techniques, materials and working methods. Without losing his innate aesthetic sense he must be able to respond with humility and competence to the demands his neighbors may make of him.
• Anyone working in the field of design has a hard task ahead of him: to clear his neighbor’s mind of all preconceived notions of art and artists, notions picked up at schools where they condition you to think one way for the whole of your life, without stopping to think that life changes — and today more rapidly than ever. It is therefore up to us designers to make known our working methods in clear and simple terms, the methods we think are the truest, the most up-to-date, the most likely to resolve our common aesthetic problems. Anyone who uses a properly designed object feels the presence of an artist who has worked for him, bettering his living conditions and encouraging him to develop his taste and sense of beauty.
• We know that only the technical means of artistic achievement can be taught, not art itself. The function of art has in the past been given a formal importance which has severed it from our daily life; but art is always present when a people lives sincerely and healthily. ‘Our job is therefore to invent a new system of education that may lead — by way of a new kind of specialized teaching of science and technology — to a complete knowledge of human needs and a universal awareness of them. ‘Thus our task is to make a new kind of artist, a creator capable of understanding every kind of need: not because he is a prodigy, but because he knows how to approach human needs according to a precise method. We wish to make him conscious of his creative power, not scared of new facts, and independent of formulas in his own work.’
• ...these are certainly not objects produced by designers, for designers do not have such raging imaginations. They confine themselves to making candlesticks that look like candlesticks.

• Pure, unadulterated beauty should be the goal of civilization!
• Industrial design is about exactly what is there. The forms of industrial design are direct support for experience: they shape the conduct of our days: they structure the experience of being alive now.
• Our goal is the training of a designer so familiar with the principles of abstraction that he automatically thinks of a visual problem in terms of organized relationships and then feels free to study other aspects of the problem, or to confer with specialists in related fields. He is a designer who can, visually, cross boundaries and suggest new forms for new materials or new techniques.
• Miss Reed always told us that “Unity is the visual glue that holds everything together. You know that you have achieved it when all the visual relationships within the design are organized in such exquisite dependent relationship that every element supports and strengthens every other and any minor change would upset the perfect balance and tension.
• She had a gift for friendship and nurtured long-term, personal relationships with many of her former students. They phoned at all hours, and came and went from her apartment, driving her to and from Pratt, taking her to lunch and dinner. They escorted her on her travels and slept on her couch when they came to town. They ran errands, helped her sort through piles of papers and slides, and brought her out to the country for weekends after she gave up her own country home.
• Teaching is a marvelous adventure—like having a huge laboratory in which to carry out experiments.
• Of course, a product is no good to anyone unless the function is properly worked out. The object should express what it is very directly, but it is possible for a design to express what it is and also be a beautiful object in its own right. We introduce the student to an ordered sequence of purely visual experiences by which an artist may develop his understanding and his recognition of the abstract elements in any design situation. Our goal is the training of a designer so familiar with the principles of abstraction that he automatically thinks of a visual problem in terms of organized relationships and then feels free to study other aspects of the problem or to confer with specialists in related fields. He is a designer who can visually cross boundaries and suggest new forms for new materials or new techniques.
• Like a piano teacher, she made you do the exercises over and over so many times that you lost all your tricks. — Tucker Viemeister

• Design is beyond window dressing products.
• Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating.
• Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself. Bad design, on the other hand, screams out its inadequacies, making itself very noticeable.
• Rule of thumb: if you think something is clever and sophisticated beware-it is probably self-indulgence.
• The idea that a person is at fault when something goes wrong is deeply entrenched in society. That’s why we blame others and even ourselves. Unfortunately, the idea that a person is at fault is embedded in the legal system. When major accidents occur, official courts of inquiry are set up to assess the blame. More and more often the blame is attributed to “human error.” The person involved can be fined, punished, or fired. Maybe training procedures are revised. The law rests comfortably. But in my experience, human error usually is a result of poor design: it should be called system error. Humans err continually; it is an intrinsic part of our nature. System design should take this into account. Pinning the blame on the person may be a comfortable way to proceed, but why was the system ever designed so that a single act by a single person could cause calamity? Worse, blaming the person without fixing the root, underlying cause does not fix the problem: the same error is likely to be repeated by someone else.
• A brilliant solution to the wrong problem can be worse than no solution at all: solve the correct problem.
• Cognition attempts to make sense of the world: emotion assigns value.
• The problem with the designs of most engineers is that they are too logical. We have to accept human behavior the way it is, not the way we would wish it to be.
• The vicious cycle starts: if you fail at something, you think it is your fault. Therefore you think you can’t do that task. As a result, next time you have to do the task, you believe you can’t, so you don’t even try. The result is that you can’t, just as you thought. You’re trapped in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• It is easy to design devices that work well when everything goes as planned. The hard and necessary part of design is to make things work well even when things do not go as planned.
• One way of overcoming the fear of the new is to make it look like the old.
• Norman’s Law: The day the product team is announced, it is behind schedule and over its budget.
• When things go right, people credit their own abilities and intelligence. The onlookers do the reverse. When they see things go well for someone else, they sometimes credit the environment, or luck.
• Finally, people have to actually purchase it. It doesn’t matter how good a product is if, in the end, nobody uses it.
• In the university, professors make up artificial problems. In the real world, the problems do not come in nice, neat packages. They have to be discovered.
• The design of everyday things is in great danger of becoming the design of superfluous, overloaded, unnecessary things.
• Poor feedback can be worse than no feedback at all, because it is distracting, uninformative, and in many cases irritating and anxiety-provoking.
• It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines.
• Original ideas are the easy part. Actually producing the idea as a successful product is what is hard.
• Affordances define what actions are possible. Signifiers specify how people discover those possibilities: signifiers are signs, perceptible signals of what can be done. Signifiers are of far more importance to designers than are affordances.
• Don't criticize unless you can do better. Try to understand how the faulty design might have occurred: try to determine how it could have been done otherwise.
• In design, one of the most difficult activities is to get the specifications right.
• Why do we need to know about the human mind? Because things are designed to be used by people, and without a deep understanding of people, the designs are apt to be faulty, difficult to use, difficult to understand.
• The meanings of today may not be the meanings of the future.
• Cognition and emotion cannot be separated. Cognitive thoughts lead to emotions: emotions drive cognitive thoughts. The brain is structured to act upon the world, and every action carries with it expectations, and these expectations drive emotions. That is why much of language is based on physical metaphors, why the body and its interaction with the environment are essential components of human thought. Emotion is highly underrated. In fact, the emotional system is a powerful information processing system that works in tandem with cognition. Cognition attempts to make sense of the world: emotion assigns value. It is the emotional system that determines whether a situation is safe or threatening, whether something that is happening is good or bad, desirable or not. Cognition provides understanding: emotion provides value judgements. A human without a working emotional system has difficulty making choices. A human without a cognitive system is dysfunctional.
• When people fail to follow these bizarre, secret rules, and the machine does the wrong thing, its operators are blamed for not understanding the machine, for not following its rigid specifications. With everyday objects, the result is frustration. With complex devices and commercial and industrial processes, the resulting difficulties can lead to accidents, injuries, and even deaths. It is time to reverse the situation: to cast the blame upon the machines and their design. It is the machine and its design that are at fault. It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines.
• If the system lets you make the error, it is badly designed.
• With the passage of time, the psychology of people stays the same, but the tools and objects in the world change.
• Design is successful only if the final product is successful—if people buy it, use it, and enjoy it, thus spreading the word. A design that people do not purchase is a failed design, no matter how great the design team might consider it.
• Procedural knowledge is difficult or impossible to write down and difficult to teach. It is best taught by demonstration and best learned through practice.
• A device is easy to use when the set of possible actions is visible, when the controls and displays exploit natural mappings.
• Alas, sometimes clever people are too clever for our good. Some well-meaning plumbing designers have decided that consistency should be ignored in favor of their own, private brand of psychology.
• Because retrieval is a reconstructive process, it can be erroneous. We may reconstruct events the way we would prefer to remember them, rather than the way we experienced them. It is relatively easy to bias people so that they form false memories, “remembering” events in their lives with great clarity, even though they never occurred. This is one reason that eyewitness testimony in courts of law is so problematic: eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. A huge number of psychological experiments show how easy it is to implant false memories into people’s minds so convincingly that people refuse to admit that the memory is of an event that never happened.
• We are creative and imaginative, not mechanical and precise. Machines require precision and accuracy; people don’t. And we are particularly bad at providing precise and accurate inputs.
• Some things can only be solved by massive cultural changes, which probably means they will never be solved.
• Recognize that most of our interactions with products are actually interactions with a complex system: good design requires consideration of the entire system to ensure that the requirements, intentions, and desires at each stage are faithfully understood and respected at all the other stages.
• Question everything. I am particularly fond of “stupid” questions. A stupid question asks about things so fundamental that everyone assumes the answer is obvious.
• If the skill is easily automated, it wasn't essential.
• We only need to remember sufficient knowledge to let us get our tasks done. Because so much knowledge is available in the environment, it is surprising how little we need to learn. This is one reason people can function well in their environment and still be unable to describe what they do.
• Yet surprisingly in this era of screen-based devices, paper tools are still enormously popular and effective, as the number of paper-based diaries and reminders indicates.
• Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible, serving us without drawing attention to itself.
• Human intelligence is highly flexible and adaptive, superb at inventing procedures and objects that overcome its own limits. The real powers come from devising external aids that enhance cognitive abilities.
• Design is concerned with how things work, how they are controlled, and the nature of the interaction between people and technology.
• Creeping featurism is the tendency to add to the number of features of a product, often extending the number beyond all reason. There is no way that a product can remain usable and understandable by the time it has all of those special-purpose features that have been added in over time.
• Root cause analysis is the name of the game: investigate the accident until the single, underlying cause is found. What this ought to mean is that when people have indeed made erroneous decisions or actions, we should determine what caused them to err. This is what root cause analysis ought to be about. Alas, all too often it stops once a person is found to have acted inappropriately. Basically, it means that when searching for the reason, even after you have found one, do not stop: ask why that was the case. And then ask why again. Keep asking until you have uncovered the true underlying causes.
• When companies try to increase sales by matching every feature of their competitors, they end up hurting themselves. After all, when products from two companies match feature by feature, there is no longer any reason for a customer to prefer one over another.
• Often people will use their own conceptual models of the world to determine the perceived causal relationship between the thing being blamed and the result. The word perceived is critical: the causal relationship does not have to exist; the person simply has to think it is there.
• So the hierarchy of goals is roughly: satisfy hunger; eat; cook; read cookbook; get more light. This is called a root cause analysis: asking “Why?” until the ultimate, fundamental cause of the activity is reached.
• A conceptual model is an explanation, usually highly simplified, of how something works. It doesn’t have to be complete or even accurate as long as it is useful.
• It is amazing how often people solve the problem before them without bothering to question it.
• Market-driven pressures plus an engineering-driven company yield ever-increasing features, complexity, and confusion. But even companies that do intend to search for human needs are thwarted by the severe challenges of the product development process, in particular, the challenges of insufficient time and insufficient money.
• The most effective way of helping people remember is to make it unnecessary.
• Technology does not make us smarter. People do not make technology smart. It is the combination of the two, the person plus the artifact, that is smart. Together, with our tools, we are a powerful combination. On the other hand, if we are suddenly without these external devices, then we don’t do very well. In many ways, we do become less smart.
• Once again, the designer should assume that people will be interrupted during their activities and that they may need assistance in resuming their operations.
• Never underestimate the power of social pressures on behavior, causing otherwise sensible people to do things they know are wrong and possibly dangerous.
• To understand products, it is not enough to understand design or technology: it is critical to understand business.
• So we must design our machines on the assumption that people will make errors.
• Product development involves an incredible mix of disciplines, from designers to engineers and programmers, manufacturing, packaging, sales, marketing, and service.
• Producing a good product requires a lot more than good technical skills: it requires a harmonious, smoothly functioning, cooperative and respectful organization.
• When a new way of doing things is vastly superior to another, then the merits of change outweigh the difficulty of change. Just because something is different does not mean it is bad. If we only kept to the old, we could never improve.
• Most of human behavior is a result of subconscious processes. We are unaware of them. As a result, many of our beliefs about how people behave—including beliefs about ourselves—are wrong. That is why we have the multiple social and behavioral sciences, with a good dash of mathematics, economics, computer science, information science, and neuroscience.
• We need to remove the word failure from our vocabulary, replacing it instead with learning experience. To fail is to learn: we learn more from our failures than from our successes. With success, sure, we are pleased, but we often have no idea why we succeeded. With failure, it is often possible to figure out why, to ensure that it will never happen again.
• Two of the most important characteristics of good design are discoverability and understanding.
• Most radical ideas fail: large companies are not tolerant of failure. Small companies can jump in with new, exciting ideas because if they fail, well, the cost is relatively low.
• Most new inventions fail. And even the few that succeed to take decades to do so.
• In general, people tend to think of innovation as being radical, major changes, whereas the most common and powerful form of it is actually small and incremental.
• In the real world, the problems do not come in nice, neat packages. They have to be discovered. It is all too easy to see only the surface problems and never dig deeper to address the real issues.
• Good designers never start by trying to solve the problem given to them: they start by trying to understand what the real issues are. As a result, rather than converge upon a solution, they diverge, studying people and what they are trying to accomplish, generating idea after idea after idea.
• Human centered design is the process of ensuring that people’s needs are met, that the resulting product is understandable and usable, that it accomplishes the desired tasks, and that the experience of use is positive and enjoyable. Effective design needs to satisfy a large number of constraints and concerns, including shape and form, cost and efficiency, reliability and effectiveness, understandability and usability, the pleasure of the appearance, the pride of ownership, and the joy of actual use. HCD is a procedure for addressing these requirements, but with an emphasis on two things: solving the right problem, and doing so in a way that meets human needs and capabilities.
• The best products come from ignoring these competing voices and instead focusing on the true needs of the people who use the product.
• True customer-centric and customer-driven companies (rather than competition-driven) can avoid feature-creep.

• Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.
• In visual perception, a thing is never seen as it really is
• A strong challenge to a class is to work with 3 or 4 given colors selected by a teacher or student. This and a continued use of disliked colors will teach that preference and dislike as in life so with color usually result from prejudices, from lack of experience and insight.
• Color is fooling us all the time. All the time, like women do, you see, life is interesting.
• In my color book there is no new theory of color. But, in it, there is a way to learn to see.
• I have not taught art. Instead of art, I have taught philosophy…I never have taught [techniques for] how to paint. All my doing was to make people to see.
• We can hear a single tone but rarely do we see a single color unrelated to other colors.
• Anyone who predicts the effect of colors proves that he has no experience with color.
• I have said to my students ‘I am putting you into a vacuum and asking you to breathe.’
• This book presents results of search, not of what is academically called research.
• As it is not a compilation from books, it does not end with a list of books — either books read, or books not read. Instead, this book ends with an acknowledgement of my students who are the authors of sample studies, and whom I therefore consider my indirect but first collaborators.
• I like to state that my students in color have taught me more color than have books about color.
• “Action” is the noun for the verb “to act”.
• The word as such [value], when unspecified, permits application in innumerable directions... Unfortunately, the careless use of “value,” particularly with regard to equal lightness—as well as false examples reproduced in books—has destroyed it as a means of measure.
• As basic rules of any language must be practiced continuously, and therefore are never fixed, so exercises toward distinct color effects never are done or over. New and different cases will be discovered time and again, and should be presented to the class again and again. In this way the study will be a mutual give and take. It will also show that all thorough study is basic, and that all education is self-education. This indicates that we expect from every student several solutions to each problem. In the end, teaching is a matter not of method but of heart. Therefore, the most decisive factor is the teacher's personality. His enthusiastic concern with the student's growth counts more than how much he knows. It is well known that "the teacher is always right," but rarely does this fact elicit respect or sympathy; even less often does it prove competence and authority. But the teacher actually is right and always will gain confidence when he admits that he does not know, that he cannot decide, and, as it often is with color, that he is unable to make a choice or to give advice. Besides, good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.
• The results of our trial-and-error experimentation, mostly done after class, are exhibited at the beginning of the next class. These studies we call the admission tickets" to the class.)
• In the previous chapters we have presented a studio course, or, if you prefer, a laboratory or workshop course which opposes an administrative attitude of "theory and practice." Naturally, practice is not preceded but followed by theory. Such study promotes a more lasting teaching and learning through experience. Its aim is development of creativeness realized in discovery and invention-the criteria of creativity, or flexibility, being imagination and fantasy. Altogether it promotes "thinking in situations," a new educational concept unfortunately little known and less cultivated, so far.
• These exercises are not meant to illustrate, or to decorate or beautify something, but aim at the development of the ability to produce the desired color effects. This reiterates our disbelief in self-expression, either as a way of study or as its aim, in schools.
• After too much non-teaching, non-learning, and a consequent non-seeing, in too many art "activities" -it is time to advocate again a basic step-by-step learning which promotes recognition of insight coming from experience, and evaluation resulting from comparison. This, in sum, means recognition of development and improvement, that is, of growth, growth of ability. This growth is not only a most exciting experience; it is inspiring and thus the strongest incentive for intensified action, for continued investigation (search instead of re-search), for learning through conscious practice.
• Singing a tune and playing it on instruments- even more, conducting several instruments- provides more contact, more insight than merely hearing the tune. So cooking, normally and naturally, teaches more than reading recipes.
• We practice first and mainly a study of ourselves.

• Above all else show the data.
• Graphics reveal data.
• Of course, statistical graphics, just like statistical calculations, are only as good as what goes into them.
• A silly theory means silly graphic.
• Graphical excellence begins with telling the truth about the data.
• Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space.
• Allowing artist-illustrators to control the design and content of statistical graphics is almost like allowing typographers to control the content, style, and editing of prose.
• The emphasis is on maximizing principles, empirical measures of graphical performance, and the sequential improvement of graphics through revision and editing. Insights into graphical design are to be gained, I believe, from theories of what makes for excellence in art, architecture, and prose.
• Most of all, then, this book is a celebration of data graphics.
• Get it right or let it alone. The conclusion you jump to may be your own. — James Thunder
• As to the propriety and justness of representing sums of money, and time, by parts of space, tho' very readily agreed to by most men, yet a few seem to apprehend that there may possibly be some deception in it, of which they are not aware. — William Playfair, The Commercial and Political Atlas (London, 1786)
• Different people see the same areas somewhat differently; perceptions change with experience; and perceptions are context-different.
• Misperception and miscommunication are certainly not special to statistical graphics.
• Why do artists draw graphics that lie? Why do the world's major newspaper and magazines publish them?...Lurking behind the inept graphic is a lack of judgment about quantitative evidence, Nearly all those who produce graphics for mass publication are trained exclusively in the fine arts and have had little experience with the analysis of data. Such experience is essential for achieving precision and grace in the presence of statistics, but even textbooks of graphical design are silent on how to think about numbers. Illustrators too often see their work as an exclusively artistic enterprise--the words "creative," "concept," and "style" combine regularly in all possible permutations, a Big Think jargon for the small task of constructing a time-series a few data points long. Those who get ahead are those who beautify data, never mind statistical integrity.
• The doctrine of boring data serves political ends, helping to advance certain interests over others in bureaucratic struggles for control of a publication's resources. For if the numbers are dull dull dull, then an artist, indeed many artists, indeed an Art Department and an Art Director are required to animate the data, lest the eyes of the audience glaze over. Thus the doctrine encourages placing data graphics under control of artists rather than in the hands of those who write the words and know the substance. As the art bureaucracy grows, style replaces content. And the word people, having lost space in the publication to data decorators, console themselves with thoughts that statistics are really rather tedious anyway.
• If the statistics are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers. Finding the right numbers requires as much specialized skill- statistical skill-and hard work as creating a beautiful design or covering a complex news story.
• Many believe that graphical displays should divert and entertain those in the audience who find the words in the text too difficult.
• If you have to explain it, don't use it.
• ... no nation ranks higher in its collective passion for statistics. In Japan, statistics are the subject of a holiday, local and national conventions, awards ceremonies and nationwide statistical collection and graph-drawing contests. "This year," said Yoshiharu Takahashi, a Government statistician, "we had almost 30,000 entries. Actually, we had 29,836." Entries in the [children's statistical graph contest were screened three times by judges, who gave first prize this year to the work of five 7-year-olds. Their graph creation, titled "Mom, play with us more often," was the result of a survey of 32 classmates on the frequency that mothers play with their offspring and the reasons given for not doing so.... Other children's work examined the frequency of family phone usage and correlated the day's temperature with cicada singing.' — Andrew H. Malcolm
• It wastes the tremendous communicative power of graphics to use them merely to decorate a few numbers.
• Like weeds, many varieties of chartjunk flourish.
• Painting is special, separate, a matter of meditation and contemplation, for me, no physical action or social sport. As much consciousness as possible. Clarity, completeness, quintessence, quiet. No noise, no schmutz, no schmerz, no fauve schwärmerei. Perfection, passiveness, consonance, consummateness. No palpitations, no gesticulation, no grotesquerie. Spirituality, serenity, absoluteness, coherence. No automatism, no accident, no anxiety, no catharsis, no chance. Detachment, disinterestedness, thoughtfulness, transcendence. No humbugging, no button-holing, no exploitation, no mixing things up. — Ad Reinhardt, statement for the catalogue of the exhibition, "The New Decade: 35 American Painters and Sculptors," Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1955.
• Graphical elegance is often found in simplicity of design and complexity of data.

• Creative confidence is like a muscle—it can be strengthened and nurtured through effort and experience. Our goal is to help build that confidence in you.
• Creative confidence is a way of seeing that potential and your place in the world more clearly, unclouded by anxiety and doubt.
• We think of creativity as using your imagination to create something new in the world.
• In the business world, creativity manifests itself as innovation.
• For the people we've worked with, opening up the flow of creativity is like discovering that you've been driving a car with the emergency brake on—and suddenly experiencing what it feels like when you release the brake and can drive freely.
• In our experience, everybody is the creative type.
• Creative energy is one of our most precious resources.
• A growth mindset is a passport to new adventures.
• Effort is the path to mastery, so let's at least give it a try.
• Designers always act with intention.
• Everything in modern society is the result of a collection of decisions made by someone.
• Failure sucks, but instructs.
• We believe the lessons learned from failures may make us smarter—even stronger.
• Relentless practice creates a database of experience that you can draw upon to make more enlightened choices.
• Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.
• When our self-worth isn't on the line, we are more willing to courageous and risk sharing our raw talents and gifts.
• A sketch is worth a thousand words.
• Courage is only the accumulation of small steps.
• Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.
• Daydreaming gets a bad rep, but prolific mind wanderers score higher on tests of creativity.
• The first step toward a great answer is to reframe the question.
• Nurture the kind of prepared mind that seizes the moment when an epiphany occurs.
• Creative confidence people are not just passive observers. They live in the active voice. They write the scripts of their own lives, and in doing so they have a greater impact on the world around them. They believe actions can make a positive difference.
• The most effective way to practice design thinking is by showing, not telling.
• Don't turn talk a substitute for action.
• Show, don't tell.
• The most innovative companies in the 21st century have transitioned from command-and-control organizations to a participatory approach that involves collaboration and teamwork.
• Few people think about it or are aware of it. But there is nothing made by human beings that does not involve a design decision somewhere. — Bill Moggridge

• Failure isn't a necessary evil. In fact, it isn't even at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new.
• It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them.
• Unleashing creativity requires that we loosen the controls, accept risk, trust our colleagues, work to clear the path for them, and pay attention to anything that creates fear.
• When faced with a challenge, get smarter....I have met people who took what seemed the safer path and were the lesser for it....Always take a chance on better, even if it seems threatening.
• You don’t have to ask permission to take responsibility.
• To ensure quality, then, excellence must be an earned word, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves.
• …societal conditioning discourages telling the truth to those perceived to be in higher positions.
• Failure is painful, and our feelings about this pain tend to screw up our understanding of its worth.
• How do we face our failures without fear?
• Self-interest guides opposition to change....Once you master any system, you typically become blind to its flaws; even if you can see them, they appear far too complex and intertwined to consider changing.

• Law 1: Reduce | The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction. When subtracting from a product be careful to ensure that the product’s core value and quality are always there.
  • Shrink: Psychologically, people fear big things and prefer small ones. Small and lightweight things are more likely to win people’s sympathy. The appearance of technology products has always followed this underlying rule. Taking mobile phones as an example, lightness and miniaturization are obvious trends (but not absolute). Correspondingly, the realization of a lightweight, miniaturized appearance benefits from the high internal technical advances, such as the IC of smartphones, which allows more complex calculations and processing to be done in a smaller central processing unit.
  • Hide: The high-frequency and high-priority functions are presented in the core position, while other secondary parts are hidden or semi-hidden. This is one of the most straightforward and practical ways to improve usability. But consumers may not buy into it. In consumer psychology, the more exposed functions, the more they cater to consumers (people always want more but are not good at handling too much). Designers must guide users to restrain their desires and ensure the optimal use of limited core functions.
  • Embody: The third point emphasizes that the simpler something is, the more it needs to be based on high-quality; otherwise, it feels of poor quality. IKEA’s products are simple, but we don’t think IKEA products are synonymous with high quality because their quality and materials are relatively ordinary. B&O’s audio and Japanese porcelain are excellent design examples that integrate simplicity and quality. Therefore, the more minimalist the product, the higher the requirements for quality, craftsmanship, materials, and details.
• Law 2: Organize | Restructuring (Ordering) can make a complex system look simple.
  • Reorganizing the external interface elements can make the product look more organized and simple. The book mentions a method named SLIP: Sort — label —Integrate—Priority. It should be noted that there are many possibilities for classification, labeling, and integration. To maximize the significance for the user, scattered elements (functional elements, formal elements, etc.) need to be classified and integrated based on the reasons which require careful handling by designers. The reorganization of the form level is also related to the Gestalt method.
  • The basic theory of Gestalt psychology believes that human recognition of any visual image is a form and outline organized by the visual perception system and formed in the process of experience. For example, in visual recognition, people will naturally repair a complete circular shape from an incomplete one.
  • How to make the organization of formal elements tend to have ideal effects? A simple method is to squint (squinting can help us see the overall form rather than a specific part) to see the overall impact to grasp a certain tendency towards perfect form.
• Law 3: Time | Saving or optimizing the perception of time is a form of simplification.
  • If a design optimizes a process and saves time, that can be considered simplification. However, the time law is more than it. Designers can also consider changing people’s perceptions of time, except saving people’s time. For example, in Las Vegas casinos, the spatial design erases everything related to the sense of time. There are no clocks or windows to reveal the existence of time, which allows people to be fully immersed in gambling. By “hiding” the external sense of time, people can ignore time.
  • While waiting for a computer to produce a result, the accelerated progress bar can calm the user. People need all kinds of positive hints to feel that they are on the right track, and visual form is a language that can give users appropriate hints as long as it is applied properly.
• Law 4: Learning | Knowledge makes everything simpler.
  • This law focuses on how to reduce the cognitive load of users when they encounter an unfamiliar product. One important method is to utilize metaphors to create a sense of familiarity entirely.
  • Using the “Relate-translate-surprise” method to enhance the product's simplicity allows users to accept quickly and like the product.
  • Designers can consider culture, familiar texts, or symbols and find an affinity form for a new technology product, such as calling on familiar and related things in users’ mental image, allowing users to accept the product quickly. Or by the product’s semantics, users can directly understand its function and usage.
  • Excellent designers are good at connecting the designed product and the context of people’s lives.
  • After much repetitive learning and practice, experts can refine the same content to be more concise and directly hit the core.
• Law 5: Differences | Simplicity and complexity need each other.
  • We relied on walking in ancient times. Later came horse carriages, and with further technological advancements, we now have cars, airplanes, and other more convenient modes of transportation. However, these conveniences are built on the foundation of increasingly advanced technology. Similarly, products that provide a simple user experience often rely on complex and powerful backend technology.
  • Complexity and simplicity are interdependent. On the other hand, humans naturally seek differentiation. Amongst many complex and similar things, a product with a simple design will attract more attention. But humans must pursue more than simplicity, as it would be monotonous. People seek change, and changes in things easily capture their attention. Only after experiencing complexity can one appreciate simplicity. For example, the changes in rhythm throughout the four seasons are fascinating. Designers need to create experiences with changes and rhythms.
• Law 6: Context | What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
  • “Man is an animal suspended in the web of meaning he himself has woven,” One of the designer’s missions is to give meaning to “things” so that they exist more harmoniously in the web of social purpose. The discovery of meaning often comes from focusing on the whole and context. Therefore, design sometimes cannot be too focused but needs to find a more significant meaning based on a global perspective. This law shows the Eastern spirit, emphasizing context awareness and making designers focus on those invisible factors (flexible, non-tangible).
  • “Matter is necessary to form, but the value of reality lies in its immateriality.”
  • Humans who prioritize practicality find it challenging to overlook any emptiness. Urbanites always want every space to have economic value, businessmen will not miss any potential business opportunities, and technicians will not miss any additional product functions… But designers need to see the meaning of emptiness and use “white space” well in their designs. White space means less information presentation. Just as too much information is easier to dissipate people’s attention, moderate space creates a focus on the things already there. When something is scarce, we appreciate what we have even more.
  • Sometimes, design may not necessarily design a material thing but create an atmosphere and unique experience. Creating an atmosphere is secondary in industries with efficiency and practicality at their core. However, in service industries that focus on the human experience as their core business, designers must focus on various details that affect the overall atmosphere. Such as, eating at a restaurant with a good environment can change the taste of the meal. To create a harmonious atmosphere, we need to be willing to eliminate any chaotic elements. This simplification is to serve the integral atmosphere.
  • Finding a point between familiarity and complete unfamiliarity that gives people appropriate tension is also something that designers need to pay attention to. That is, not feeling bored due to excessive familiarity nor feeling pressured due to complete unfamiliarity. One reason good games are popular is that they provide suitable tension. The design of game levels does not make players feel unattainable while not being too easy, stimulating a desire for exploration.
  • High-tech products can leave the elderly feeling lost. Suppose electronic products give the elderly appropriate tension, stimulating their desire to explore without feeling too much pressure due to complete unfamiliarity. In that case, it may be more conducive to users accepting and using the product. Over-complexity makes people lose their sense of control, while simplicity gives people a feeling of easy discovery and control.
  • Law 5 tells us that we need to create a rhythm of change. So the transition between simplicity and complexity is the key to building a sense of rhythm. Law 6 emphasizes that designers must help users find an appropriate position between their cognitive relationship and “things” (between complexity and simplicity). Once people feel they are in a proper place in this relationship, they can freely lose themselves in the rhythm.
• Law 7: Emotion | Simple doesn’t mean excluding emotion. More emotions are better than less.
  • Starting from the first principle, designers need to make the functionality of objects clear and orderly at the logical level. This principle tells us that simplicity is not always the best solution. Most of the time, we should start with humanity and give the “object” a certain warmth.
  • Providing online communication tools that only offer basic text transmission, like extremely modern functionalist products, ignores the rich emotions we need to convey in communication.
  • In 1982, Mr. Scott Fahlmn invented the first smiley face for online communication, and since then, various expressions have become popular… People will not refuse designs that have warmth and emotion.
  • Japanese traditional culture emphasizes the mysterious integrity of the world, and everything has a soul and deserves respect. Products designed with this belief and spirit have pure divinity. The soul and emotion of a craftsman are injected into it, creating a spiritual connection between the “object” and people. Therefore, such objects will make people more comfortable. Achieving clarity and conciseness is not difficult, but what is difficult is giving things the appropriate warmth and making people feel comfortable.
• Law 8: Trust | In simplicity we trust.
  • It is human nature to trust in a power beyond ourselves. We trust in the love of our parents completely. But can a relationship of trust be established between people and products or services? When we try to “trust” a product, we may receive some benefits (such as various conveniences), but we may also have to sacrifice privacy. “Trust” is a complex topic, but it is particularly worth considering today as personal privacy data is increasingly exposed.
  • Make users relax: In a complex social environment, it is almost impossible to make a person relax. Think about what kind of design can make people relax. B&O’s design tries to ease tension and make people relax. The core of audio design, of course, is to provide the best sound quality experience but to allow people to enjoy the sound quality better, the first consideration is how to create a relaxed and comfortable feeling. In a relaxed state, music will naturally permeate into people’s senses.
  • Provide master-level service: “Omakase,” originating from the Japanese cuisine culture, means “trust the chef,” which allows the chef to make dishes beyond the regular menu according to the season and the chef’s preferences. This casual way of serving is based on a high degree of fit between users and chefs. Users trust the chef wholeheartedly and allow him to play freely, making this unique dining experience possible. The inspiration of Omakase is that if you want users to trust your service, you need to provide a master-level service first.
  • Allow users to undo or return: Software products generally provide an “Undo” function that allows users to undo the previous operation. This method is also applicable to service or product design, allowing users the right to regret or undo operations moderately. For example, the e-commerce industry will enable users to return goods, which is a way to gain trust. As long as the benefits of customer trust outweigh the cost of return loss, e-commerce should “tolerate” user returns.
  • If you want to establish trust between users and products, you need to provide flexible space, make users feel comfortable and have control, and trust will have a chance to be established. Of course, the relationship of trust between people and the system is a game. The more the system knows about the user, the less pointless thinking the user has. On the contrary, the more the user knows about the system, the more precise control the user has.
  • The dilemma of future product or service design is balancing the trust relationship between people and the system. For a designer, not only do you need to think about how to make users trust your product, but you also need to be aware of protecting people (their privacy, etc.)
• Law 9: One | Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.
  • This principle tries to integrate the previous ones into three parts:
    • Away: Move things that users don’t care about further away. For example, Google’s search service has complex search operations in the backend, and the front end only provides input interactions and query results. SaaS solutions like Salesforce enable users to get services through a single digital page, while complex data and software are hosted in the cloud.
    • Open: Openness simplifies complexity. Of course, complete openness is unrealistic, but convenience can be brought through partial transparency. For example, Google Maps and Facebook open APIs allow more small and medium-sized developers to access the developed applications into large network services. Here, openness only opens a window, but it is enough to bring more diverse applications and services.
    • Power: The less you seek, the less you are bound (slightly esoteric). Use less, gain more. In the design field, there is a belief in producing relatively good solutions based on constraints. How to use limited resources wisely and creatively to create value is worth exploring.

Books

• Paul Rand | A Designer's Art by Paul Rand
• Creative Confidence by Tom Kelley and David Kelley
• Design As Art by Bruno Munari
• The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte
• Visual Grammar by Christian Leborg
• Interaction Of Color by Josef Albers
• Design Of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
• Geometry Of Design | Studies In Proportion And Composition by Kimberly Elam
• Elements Of Design | Rowena Reed Kostellow And The Structure Of Visual Relationships by Gail Greet Hannah
• Dieter Rams | The Complete Works by Klaus Klemp
• The Laws Of Simplicity

Links

• Error Cost Escalation Through the Project Life Cycle 2004 by NASA
• The Total Economic Impact Of IBM’s Design Thinking Practice
• The Business Value of Design by McKinsey
• The True ROI of UX: Convincing the Executive Suite
• Craft by Paul Stammy
• Rams Documentary
• Vitra Design Museum, Germany
• Dieter Rams Interview
• Rams 10 principles
• On Design Thinking
• 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design
• Laws of UX
• Interaction Design
• E. Goodman, E. Stolterman, R. Wakkary. Understanding Interaction Design Practices (2011)
• Designing Fluid Interfaces by Apple
• Human Interface Guidelines by Apple
• Human Interface Guidelines:The Apple® Desktop Interface (1987)
• The curious case of user interfaces - Rasmus Andersson (Config 2023)
• The Sound of Software by Notboring Software
• What Is Information Architecture & Why Does It Matter? by Hubspot
• Ask HN: What are some well-designed websites?
• Information Architecture open source resources on Github
• Darren Hood’s Information Architecture & Information Design Book Recommendation List
• Uber winning design