The art of not constructing It would be well if engineering were less generally thought of, and even defined, as the art of constructing. In a certain important sense it is rather the art of not constructing: or, to define it rudely, but not inaptly, it is the art of doing well with one dollar that which any bungler can do with two. Arthur M. Wellington, The Economic Theory of the Location of Railways Economy of material and labor simplicityengineering
The amount of work not done Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential. Manifesto for Agile Software Development -2000 Lines Of Code simplicity
Economy of material and labor Whatever the comparative merits of [various bed framing methods], what is clear from Aristotle's Mechanica is that economy of material, and labor, was as much an issue in ancient times as it is now. Henry Petroski, The Evolution of Useful Things The requirements of economyThe art of not constructing simplicity
To be truly simple 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. It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of the complexity. 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 way 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, Steve Jobs Less, but betterTool-being simplicity
Omit needless words When a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentence short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White, The Elements of Style Less, but better brevitysimplicityminimalism
Good design is simple Good design is simple. You hear this from math to painting. In math it means that a shorter proof tends to be a better one. Where axioms are concerned, especially, less is more. It means much the same thing in programming. For architects and designers it means that beauty should depend on a few carefully chosen structural elements rather than a profusion of superficial ornament. Similarly, in painting, a still life of a few carefully observed and solidly modeled objects will tend to be more interesting than a stretch of flashy but mindlessly repetitive painting of, say, a lace collar. In writing it means: say what you mean and say it briefly. When you're forced to be simple, you're forced to face the real problem. When you can't deliver ornament, you have to deliver substance. Paul Graham, Taste for Makers simplicity
Conversations, not commandments Good software comes from a vision, combined with conversations not commandments. In a craft-focused environment, care for efficiency, simplicity, and details really do matter. I didn’t leave my last job just because I wanted to make something new. I left because I wanted to make it in a way I could be proud of. Pirijan Ketheswaran, Why Software is Slow and Shitty pketh.org detailscraftsimplicityefficiency
Perfection It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars perfectiondesignsimplicitymaking
August short No. 2: Glass An Article by Riccardo Mori morrick.me Glass looks and feels perfectly tailored to my photo sharing needs and expectations. For me it’s even better than pre-Facebook Instagram in the sense that it pushes me to select and share what I think are good photos (same as it happens with Flickr), rather than making me obsess with getting ‘the Instagram shot’ at all costs every day or multiple times in a day. It doesn’t cheapen photography like Instagram has done for years. That’s why I hope Glass’s founders/developers will resist feature creep. Resist user objections like: I don’t think Glass is offering that much for the subscription price they’re asking. There are a lot of people who will gladly pay for having a cleaner, simpler, focused experience. featuressimplicityproductsphotography
The return of fancy tools An Article by Tom MacWright macwright.com Technology is seeing a little return to complexity. Dreamweaver gave way to hand-coding websites, which is now leading into Webflow, which is a lot like Dreamweaver. Evernote give way to minimal Markdown notes, which are now becoming Notion, Coda, or Craft. Visual Studio was “disrupted” by Sublime Text and TextMate, which are now getting replaced by Visual Studio Code. JIRA was replaced by GitHub issues, which is getting outmoded by Linear. The pendulum swings back and forth, which isn’t a bad thing complexitysimplicitytoolssoftwaretechnologynotetaking
In Praise of Small Menus An Article by Rachel Sugar www.grubstreet.com The best way to experience a restaurant, I have always felt, is by eating exactly what it wants to feed you. I do not want choices. I want the best thing. A restaurant might have five or ten best things, but it cannot have 45. There are many infuriating things about the world, but one of the more fixable is the sensation of acute regret from having ordered wrong. Why are there possibly wrong orders? Recently, I was at a fancy restaurant with great pastas and bad pizzas. So cut the pizzas! A kitchen that focuses on its strengths turns out consistently excellent things, even if that results in fewer total things. fooduxchoicesimplicity
Don't Rush to Simplicity An Article by Shawn Wang www.swyx.io You've probably heard this story before: A businessman finds a fisherman, who is living an idyllic, peaceful life by the sea. He laughs and tells the fisherman how to get rich instead. The fisherman asks him what he will do after he gets rich. He replies that he would retire to an idyllic, peaceful life by the sea. There's supposed to be a deep life lesson in there, but it's always felt insincere to me. To me it is better to have reached the heights of a career, or suffered an epic defeat, even if I do end up in the same place as everyone else in the end. To me simplicity is made more beautiful when understood through a long personal struggle with complexity. When I can dance with it, having turned a mighty nemesis into an old friend, and teach others to do the same. Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all. On the other side of complexityMountains are mountains zensimplicity
On the other side of complexity A Quote "I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity." — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Don't Rush to Simplicity simplicitycomplexity
Who the fuck is Guy Debord? An Article by Robin Rendle www.robinrendle.com Long, unwieldy sentencesImagining her PsychogeographySuch tortuous syntax writingsimplicity
The Shape of Design A Book by Frank Chimero shapeofdesignbook.com Near and farWhy we should readWe hear a voice whisperNeeds more loveOne candle can light another+9 More designcraft
Near and far The creative process, in essence, is an individual in dialogue with themselves and the work. The painter, when at a distance from the easel, can assess and analyze the whole of the work from this vantage. He scrutinizes and listens, chooses the next stroke to make, then approaches the canvas to do it. Then, he steps back again to see what he’s done in relation to the whole. It is a dance of switching contexts, a pitter-patter pacing across the studio floor that produces a tight feedback loop between mark-making and mark-assessing. The artist, when near, is concerned with production; when far, he enters a mode of criticism where he judges the degree of benefit (or detriment) the previous choice has had on the full arrangement. Painting’s near and far states are akin to How and Why: the artist, when close to the canvas, is asking How questions related to craft; when he steps back, he raises Why questions concerned with the whole of the work and its purpose. Near and Far may be rephrased as Craft and Analysis, which describe the kinds of questions the artist asks while in each mode. This relationship can be restated in many different ways, each addressing a necessary balance: How and Why Near and Far Making and Thinking Execution and Strategy Craft and Analysis
Why we should read Unfortunately, the program met its end because the show’s approach opposed the contemporary standard format of children’s television: teaching kids how to read, rather than Reading Rainbow’s objective, which was to teach kids about why they should read. Reading Rainbow had a long run, lasting twenty-three years, but its cancellation feels like a symbolic blow. Education, just like climbing the ladder, must be balanced between How and Why. We so quickly forget that people, especially children, will not willingly do what we teach them unless they are shown the joys of doing so. The things we don’t do out of necessity or responsibility we do for pleasure or love; if we wish children to read, they must know why. teachingreading
We hear a voice whisper The Shakers have a proverb that says, “Do not make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both, do not hesitate to make it beautiful.” We all believe that design’s primary job is to be useful. Our minds say that so long as the design works well, the work’s appearance does not necessarily matter. And yet, our hearts say otherwise. No matter how rational our thinking, we hear a voice whisper that beauty has an important role to play. beautydesign
Needs more love He held the phone to his chest, looked at me, and simply said, “Needs more love.” He pushed the portfolio back across his desk, smiled warmly, and shooed me out of his office. I still think about this advice, and what exactly he might have meant when he said my work needed more love. At the time, I took it to mean that I should improve my craft, but I’ve come to realize that he was speaking of something more fundamental and vital. My work was flat, because it was missing the spark that comes from creating something you believe in for someone you care about. This is the source of the highest craft, because an affection for the audience produces the care necessary to make the work well. beautymaking
One candle can light another Lighting one candle with another candle— spring evening. Buson is saying that we accept the light contained in the work of others without darkening their efforts. One candle can light another, and the light may spread without its source being diminished. zen
A great leap of lightness The first step of any process should be to define the objectives of the work with Why-based questions. The second step, however, should be to put those objectives in a drawer. Objectives guide the process toward an effective end, but they don’t do much to help one get going. In fact, the weight of the objectives can crush the seeds of thought necessary to begin down an adventurous path. The creative process, like a good story, needs to start with a great leap of lightness, and that is only attainable through a suspension of disbelief. The objectives shouldn’t be ignored forever, but they should be defined ahead of time, set aside, and then deployed at the appropriate moment so that we may be audacious with our ideas.
Going evil To begin, we must build momentum and then reintroduce the objectives to steer the motion. I find the best way to gain momentum is to think of the worst possible way to tackle the project. Quality may be elusive, but stupidity is always easily accessible; absurdity is fine, maybe even desired. If the project is a business card for an optician, perhaps you imagine it is illegible. (This is in the spirit, but you can do better.) If it is a brochure for an insurance agency, imagine otters on the cover and deranged handwriting on the inside for the copy. (Further!) If it is design for an exhibition of Ming Dynasty vases, brand it as an interactive show for kids, and put the vases on precariously balanced pedestals made of a shiny metal that asks to be touched. (Yes!) The important realization to have from this fun—though fruitless–exercise is that every idea you have after these will be better. Your ideas must improve, because there is no conceivable way that you could come up with anything worse.
The momentum of making Limitations narrow a big process into a smaller, more understandable space to explore. It’s the difference between swimming in a pool and being dropped off in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight. Those limitations also become the basis for the crucial first steps in improvisation. After those, the momentum of making accelerates as ideas are quickly generated without judgment. constraints
Let the body wander If the mind needs to wander, best let the body do the same. A short walk is more effective in coming up with an idea than pouring all the coffee in the world down your gullet. thinkingwalkingcreativity
Message, tone, format All design work seems to have three common traits: there is a message to the work, the tone of that message, and the format that the work takes. Successful design has all three elements working in co-dependence to achieve a whole greater than the sum of the individual parts.
Asking why Most inventions are recombinations of existing things, but where do the sparks for those combinations come from? What instigates that magic to make hybrids, to use them for unimagined purposes, and to inspire new settings for the three levers? Certain advancements seem logical and inevitable—smaller cellphones, faster computers, more reliable medical technology—while others seem to come out of nowhere. Turning avocado into caviar, for example, is not a logical conclusion in the kitchen. That choice is an inspired one. You can always spot these brilliant inventions as instances of magic, because our reaction, much like Achatz’s first meal at elBulli, is always disbelief. Henry Ford famously said that if he had asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. Of course, we know that the faster horse is a testament to the limited imagination of customers, but I’d suggest that it’s more representational of not reassessing the objectives of the work in light of new opportunities. The faster horse is a recombination of the three levers in a predictable way: the customer’s answer is staunchly loyal to the horse, the already established format of transportation. They are inside of the adjacent possible, and ask a How question: How can horses be better? Asking a Why question leads us to a different conclusion: Why are horses important? Because they quickly and reliably get us from one place to another. A Why question defines our need and uses an objective to create a satisfactory outcome for the work. This type of question is specific enough to be observable, but flexible enough to be approached in a variety of different ways. It’s easy to think that the way to improve life is to iterate on the things that we already have, but that is a trap of limited imagination. We should be iterating on how we answer our needs, and not necessarily on the way our old solutions have taken shape. The root of our practice is located in the usefulness of the work, not the form that it takes.
Outcomes and consequences The primary purpose of the design is to have it do something particular, not be any particular thing. All of this implies that design is a field of outcomes and consequences more than one of artifacts. The forms that designers produce are flexible, so long as the results serve the need.
The source of delight Design doesn’t need to be delightful for it to work, but that’s like saying food doesn’t need to be tasty to keep us alive. The pedigree of great design isn’t solely based on aesthetics or utility, but also the sensation it creates when it is seen or used. It’s a bit like food: plating a dish adds beauty to the experience, but the testament to the quality of the cooking is in its taste. It’s the same for design, in that the source of a delightful experience comes from the design’s use. ux
Every exit is an entrance somewhere At the Ace Hotel in New York, a required exit sign over a door was an eyesore, and a stark contrast from the considered, detailed wall where it was mounted. Rather than accept the wart as it was, the sign was embraced as a chance to create an experience for the hotel’s guests by integrating the exit sign into the space. Now, surrounding the sign are other letters painted on the wall in a similar condensed style. Every requirement is an opportunity for delight, even the ugly ones. Sometimes the creative treatment of these warts are the most enjoyable parts of a design. constraintsdesignexitstransitions