Minimalism sets standards

You’d be hard pressed to identify a location on the globe untouched by design. Even satellite imagery of the world’s most remote locales is captured and processed by technologies resulting from the creative efforts of a collective of aerospace engineers and specialists; a single geostationary satellite may host thousands of components touched by hundreds of hands and minds before reaching its final resting place in orbit.

Really, design touches everything we know, and has since before we had a word to define it.

And like so many art forms, design has amassed a collection of criterion to guide execution – a set of enduring fundamentals that frequently play a part in the works that are considered champions of the activity itself.

In design, trends nearly indefinitely act as supporting figures, and for good reason. By its very nature, that which is à la mode is incapable of the extended vetting required for an approach to achieve design-standard status.

Design, time-tested

There exists a collection of figures, formats, and forms that remain universally appealing over time. Decades and their encompassed fashions and features pass, and still theses standards stand, often untouched. Design standards tend to be simple visually, and are both unremarkable and striking in detail; lacking the flourishes intended to capture the eye and distract the mind, yet not for lack of effort – standards are the result of countless incremental inputs and outputs by organic occurrences and an undefinable number of designers.

In the design of a digital screen-based user interface – the 2D space within which individuals engage a platform software application – trendy graphics and interactions run the risk of distracting users from the overarching purpose of the creators.

Simplicity across mediums

Whether in the building of livable forms, fashioning of a wearable goods, or implementation of an interactive Internet experience, all design should seek to maintain the most simple possible form necessary to convey the vital message.

Cliché, yes, but the colloquial phrase “Less is more” is not only often accurate, and at three short, accessible words, an example of the beauty in simplicity.