Over the past month, I have been reading vigorously about designs of naoto fukasawa, dieter rams, kenya hara and jonathan ive. I was interested in understanding what their way of thinking is and..what makes their products sticky ?
Instead what I learnt, is a rationale for designing and developing systems and really understanding what makes a design modern/ what should modern designs have?
here are some snippets..(from various sources)
Dieter Rams
“In my experience , users react positively when the things are clear and understandable.. ….thats what particularly bothers me today, the arbitrariness and the thoughtlessness with which the products are brought to the market”
“we have too many unnecessary things everywhere.”
“less but better, good design is as little design as possible”
Jonathan Ive
a lot of what we seem to be doing…is getting design out of the way…and i think when forms develop with that sort of reason and they’re not just arbitrary shapes, it feels almost inevitable, feels almost undesigned…it feels like “well ofcourse it is that way, why would it be any other way?”
“there is a remarkable efficiency and beauty to just how much a single part can do”
Kenya Hara
I used to think that being creative means to start from zero and build up something new, but recently I’ve begun to feel that what designers do is kind of like a clean-up.
When you typeset a sentence, you don’t need an unusual font. All you need is a simple font, with each and every letter carefully considered, and that is enough to give the typography its power. It is just as how each and every leaf on a tree grows in consciousness of the sunlight and also how each and every hair on an animal’s skin grows according to its own will. A fine coat of fur on a live animal is so beautiful, but once the animal is killed and stuffed, the beauty is gone.
Naoto Fukasawa
“A very important turning point for me was the term “obsessive sketch” by takahama kyoshi, the haiku master.When the poets sentiments are overty visible, the audience may become uncomfortable
Japanese ritual is the opposite
By writing simply and only about what is there, the audience is drawn into the poet’s world. Their imagination is stimulated and a silent connection is established”
“I realized there was no need to create new forms; all I had to do was design the relationship between a human, an object, and what is around the two.
the design of an object corresponds to our unconscious movements and the environment that surrounds us.
thinking needs time.
feeling can be done in a moment.
when you see something for the first time it seems to be important. but it’s the later, when you use the object that you realise that what you’ve missed initially is the essence of what design is all about and that is the idea behind ’without thought.’
The common thread that binds these designers together is their intent of removing all that is unnecessary in the product, keeping only what is needed and let the form and hierarchy be dictated by what materials that best allow them to do that and by how people connect with the product.
no marketing jazz, no usability tests, no focus groups..
