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
Man in the Middle: The Designer A Book by C. Wright Mills www.carlosvieirareis.com The old unityDefining craftsmanshipThe central value for which they standThe star systemAs if it were an advertisement+3 More designsociety
The old unity The most fundamental splits in contemporary life occur because of the break-up of the old unity of design, production and enjoyment. life
Defining craftsmanship By craftsmanship I refer to a style of work and a way of life having the following characteristics: In craftsmanship there is no ulterior motive for work other than the product being made and the processes of its creation. In craftsmanship, plan and performance are unified, and in both, the craftsman is master of the activity and of himself in the process. The craftsman is free to begin his working according to his own plan, and during the work he is free to modify its shape and the manner of its shaping. Since he works freely, the craftsman is able to learn from his work, to develop as well as use his capacities. The craftsman’s way of livelihood determines and infuses his entire mode of living. For him there is no split of work and play, of work and culture. His work is the mainspring of his life; he does not flee from work into a separate sphere of leisure; he brings to his non-working hours the values and qualities developed and employed in his working time. craftwork
The central value for which they stand What I am suggesting to you is that designers ought to take the value of craftsmanship as the central value for which they stand; that in accordance with it they ought to do their work; and that they ought to use its norms in their social and economic and political visions of what society ought to become. designcraft
The star system The distributor is ascendant over many producers who become the rank-and-file workmen of the commercially established cultural apparatus. The star system of American culture – along with the commercial hacks – tend to kill off the chance of the cultural workman to be a worthy craftsman. work
As if it were an advertisement He designs the product itself as if it were an advertisement, for his aim and his task – acknowledged by the more forthright – is less to make better products than to make products sell better.
The Big Lie “We only give them what they want.” This is The Big Lie of mass culture and of debased art, and also it is the weak excuse for the cultural default of many designers. culture
The Fetish of human life To understand the case of America today, one must understand the economic trends and the selling mechanics of a capitalist world in which the mass production and the mass sale of goods has become The Fetish of human life, the pivot both of work and of leisure. Existing commodities must be worn out more quickly for as the market is saturated, the economy becomes increasingly dependent upon what is called replacement. It is then that obsolescence comes to be planned and the economic cycle deliberately shortened. economics
The big split The big split among designers and their frequent guilt; the enriched muddle of ideals they variously profess and the insecurity they often feel about the practice of their craft; their often great disgust and their crippling frustration. design