A few thoughts on form

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We have a studio joke/truism, “I could have made it simpler, but I didn’t have enough time and we ran out of cash.”

We start with the emotional content, the backstory— stuff we don’t tell the client, but how we bring ourselves to the project. We look at different forms, make our choices and start developing. Along the way we throw out everything we can, trying to hit that iconic note— concept made tangible, without the embroidery.

I’m sure others have different feelings about it, but this is what works for us. We use it to find the common thread sometimes— the intersection of traditional Japanese and Shaker design, for instance. A Contemporary take on Queen Anne. Not Donald Judd-style minimalism, but reducing to the essence, and comparing essences.

Here are a few reference images i have had for a long time and still even today use them.

I wish i could give credit to the original creator but i cant even remember where i got the images from, if i recall they where handed down.



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One more…

opps, meant to post this in the “sketching frustration” topic… sorry.

Haha cwatkinson, your first image had just enough of a reference to the modification of form for me to spend the next few minutes fruitlessly trying to work out how the other images related to determining form.

@Jimbo, a rather excellent designer’s variation on Blaise Pascal’s quote “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” Ultimately very true though methinks; it’s often easier to add things like ornamentation to hide a poor core execution.

On a side note, I’ve been recently reading through the Design of Everyday things, and Norman’s discussion of signifiers seems pertinent here; sometimes a completely minimalistic form doesn’t adequately convey to a user exactly how they’re supposed to use a product. Off the top of my head, a USB plug is a pretty good example - its completely rectangular profile basically guarantees that I’m going to try to plug it in the wrong way round (probably twice, inexplicably), where as something like an HDMI cable I never get wrong, thanks to the functionally unnecessary angles on the bottom half of the profile.

Key sentence placed in bold lettering.

I think I know what you are getting at, and can sympathize with your aims. Of course there will be ‘tastes’ of the users and consumers, who might tell us everything should be all blue, or all red, or smooth or spikey or have lots of fake chrome bits. On the other side there’s the design at his or her table, tasked with the honest endeavor to make something good, looking for inspiration both from the user and outside world and from within themselves.

Lately I have been asking our team to think about negative-space design, which is probably something auto and architecture designers think about all the time, but seems radical around these parts. We want to create the space for the user to inhabit, by observing them use products, we see how they use the space, and thus the ‘positive’ forms emerge from the affordances needed in that negative space. Our products tend to be large and our users tend to be sweating and flailing about so perhaps this way of looking at things breaks down when designing a stationary object that is simply plugged in and looked at every so often, like a wireless router box.

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3 words.

Adidas

Kobe

Two


Adidas-Kobe-Two-White-Pair-Front-Angle.png

^ Holy hell! THAT is an excellent example of automotive design inspiration completely ruining a product. Isn’t the story that they designed them not from the last outward, but from aesthetics inward in some kind of collaboration with a car design group?

To answer the earlier question is this about me or the people I’m designing for…ultimately the people I’m designing for. My assumption has always been that if I am thinking something, others are also thinking the same thing. So the struggle to find functional, lasting and repurposable things that simply and elegantly disappear cannot by my struggle alone.

A very good proof of this is the car market. A honda civic is a great car by most practical metrics. It’s reliable, gets great gas mileage, and accelerates reasonably fast enough for all but the most extreme practical purposes. A BMW 328i is almost twice as expensive, is way less reliable, gets worse gas mileage, more expensive to maintain, etc. etc. But if you asked most people which car they’d rather have if money was no object, they’d say the BMW. The reason for that is because it’s emotionally more fulfilling to own one. They’re more fun to drive, they look way cooler, they have a bunch of very nice features (that are by and large unnecessary), and they’re a status symbol.

I’m not sure that’s true. If someone is status oriented, sure, they’ll take the BMW. Otherwise, they’ll see two metal boxes and eight wheels and take the one that’s the least hassle, assuming they haven’t been brainwashed into stupidity by car ads.

I’ve been recently reading through the Design of Everyday things, and Norman’s discussion of signifiers seems pertinent here; sometimes a completely minimalistic form doesn’t adequately convey to a user exactly how they’re supposed to use a product. Off the top of my head, a USB plug is a pretty good example - its completely rectangular profile basically guarantees that I’m going to try to plug it in the wrong way round (probably twice, inexplicably), where as something like an HDMI cable I never get wrong, thanks to the functionally unnecessary angles on the bottom half of the profile.

Crappy minimalism, like the Rashid vacuum, signifies a lack of attention to detail and a disregard for end users. Good minimalism dispenses with needless details, has an evident functionality, and is comfortable in its commonness. T shirts are good minimalism.

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I feel that things are overall better received when they appear minimal… This applies to the actual appearance and interface.

That does not mean the design itself is anywhere close to minimal.

I have designed a few products, nearly the same in functionality, but in regards to user interface, completely different. The more minimal designed product actually required some detail instruction for the end user to be able to understand how to use it, while the complex design appeared the most minimal to the end user, presenting itself as a very intuitive product, no special training required.

my point is that the minimalist approach can be seen from multiple angles, and I think that the one that would matter most to a lot of us is the one that most directly affects the user experience.

Just think of software, complexity is not bad, so long as there is order, and an attempt to conceal the complexity from those who dont understand.

I’ve often thought about this, and how things that are often lauded for being minimal can in actuality be quite difficult to use. They are not always readily apparent. Like the iPhone for example, when it first came out was actually minimal in its form and user interface. But now as they have added so much that the os is trying to accomplish and different ways of interacting (swipe up, down, left, right, in different menus and contexts to accomplish different features with no indicators of when or how to do them) but the form has remained the same, IMO it is not an intuitive user experience at all anymore.

Proportion plays a pivotal role is whether a form works. Many furniture designs would be horrible if the proportions weren’t quite right.

As far as ‘minimal is best’, I’d have to disagree. Take Philippe Starck’s masters chair; which is a mash up of 3 famous chairs into a single injection molded form. It has an interesting story to designers and design enthusiasts, but people who don’t know the story behind it also appreciate it’s aesthetic beauty. Also, the intertwining forms make it a very strong chair. I think that it’s beauty makes it less likely to be thrown away next season.

It can be repurposed as the plastic can be reground and reused.

http://blog.capwatkins.com/the-boring-designer

This piece on “The Boring Designer,” really hits the nail on the head, and does a far better job addressing the idea I was sort of poking at when I started this thread. I want to be more boring.

The Normcore of design. Haha. Certainly has it’s place.

The Jasper Morrison/Fukisoawa piece on being “Super Normal” from 2008:

Everything has a beginning and an end though. Look how baroque car design has become in the last 5 years. I don’t like it, but you have to acknowledge there are trends.

In the example below, a bike helmet has been fitted with some technology that claims to make riding more safe, hands free and improves rider communication/sharing. My question is, do you really need the helmet form included in the concept in order to get the innovative consumer features? Why can’t this technology be designed, packaged and integrated to attach to all of the existing helmets that are already out there? Can’t we stop from making more expanded bead polystyrene landfill? Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coros/coros-linx-smart-cycling-helmet-safely-tune-in-to/description

Thanks for the supernormal link. I hadn’t read about it before.

No problem, it is a bit of an older piece, but some relevant thoughts. Morrison and Fujisawa were all the rage back in '08 before minimalism went mainstream for the third (or is it fourth?) time. I think it is interesting if you track where simplification stated, I hate to say it, but it was in cars. In the 90’s form and color were massively expressive. Post memphis, post modern, bio inspired. Frog was full swing with “Form follows emotion” and everyone was following with computer mice that looked like actual mice and Oakleys that looked like they hatched out of an egg on Alien 3 (they still look like that, but that is another story), iMacs looks like plastic gum drops and MacBooks (iBooks) looked like weed alien plastic purses. Into that weird form soup, 2 cars came out of the VW California studio in the mid 90’s, the VW Concept 1 (New Beetle) and the Audi TT. Radically simple forms that influenced the entire category to move to simple shapes (though no one else pulled it off with the same level of restraint)… then comes the iPod, apple’s canonization of Braun, DWR enshrined the Eames and LeCorbusier, Dwell made you yearn for a creepily empty home, while “fuckyournoguchicoffeetable” poked fun at us all. and everything snaps to minimalism and the needle has staid pretty firmly planted there in product for over a decade… but as other people pointed out, what was minimalism with an air of luxury and insideryness (oh you get it, I get it too)… has given way a bit to over simplification, which sometimes slides into cheapness. The automotive world moved on with the BMW Z4 (GINA concept) and unfortunately even Audi abandoned its Bauhaus inspiration. You can see it leaking into product with over designed gaming mice that looks like they could be Optimus Primes tooth in a Michael Bay film. Fractal inspired form work is leaking into all kinds of things that have no reason to be shaped that way.

My thoughts. I think for brands like Apple, minimalism will stick. Look at the iPhone 7, they are moving to more of a Porsche like philosophy. This is our thing, and we will massage it as needed. Other consumer brands will shift with consumer buying patterns… so if you find that really nice coffee maker or what have you, snap it up. In 12-24 months it might look like a Decepticon.

I agree. And on the topic of apple, or minimal interfaces in general, there are two kinds of design paths in my mind. One is a very intuitive approach, and the other is a super user type of approach, where things are laid out for speed/ease. The first approach can be minimalist, but it can also get out of control fairly easily, where you end up with a button for every feature, and then it ends up just causing confusion. The second approach is minimalist by nature, but requires some learning curve on ‘how to’ access/manipulate things. Depending on the product, the short term/long term benefits could mean different things.

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Another article on Naoto Fukasawa and Super Normal, from the Herman Miller EDM just came through today.

Very strange as I only read Michaels’ post yesterday and this popped up… The Universe is telling me something.

I do have “SIMPLIFY” printed in Sans serif font above my desk on a plain white piece of paper, so I think I’ve been gravitating toward super normal for a while now, without knowing it’s a thing. Great to see that boring design is actually a celebrated (or at least recognised) design movement.

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