Laws of simplicity

I recently read this amazing book by John Maeda, about simplicity.

I highly recommend it to anyone, developers and designers. John Maeda is at the exact frontier of both worlds, touching excellence...
He presents what simplicity really is, or sould be, with ten laws to achieve it.

The ten laws are:

1. Reduce The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtfull reduction.
2. Organize Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
3. Time Savings in time feels like simplicity.
4. Learn Knowledge makes everything simpler.
5. Differences Simplicity and complexity need each other.
6. Context What lies in the peripheral of simplicity is definitively not peripheral.
7. Emotion More emotions are better than less.
8. Trust In simplicity we trust.
9. Failure Some things can never be made simple.
10. The one Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

Each law is described with a pictogram by John Maeda.
I created some wallpapers with those pictos. They are now displayed each minute on my desktop, remembering me about simplicity, and the need to achieve it, whenever possible.

You can download the wallpaper set from here.
But just don't forget to read this book!

Comments

Author

Romac

Date

01/31/2011 21:02

I'm definitely gonna read the book. Thanks for pointing it out and for the wallpapers!

Author

Romac

Date

01/31/2011 21:04

[Notice] The link to the ZIP file seems to be broken.

Author

Jean-David Gadina

Date

02/01/2011 07:43

The download link has been fixed. Thanx for the feedback... ; )

Author

Mauro

Date

03/24/2011 10:05

That book is truly amazing. It is definetely one of my favourites. I am in love with the deskpaths as well! thanks for making such good ones!