- Publisher
- MIT Press
- Published
- 2006
- Shelf
- design: Thinking
- ISBN
- 9780262134729
Thinking
The Laws of Simplicity
John Maeda
Ten short laws on subtraction, from an artist who went on to run a design school and then a venture fund.
Why read it
Maeda's useful move is to define simplicity not as less but as hidden, with the complexity relocated somewhere the user does not have to carry it. The laws about time, and about what a person will forgive while they are waiting, have quietly become the core of interface design.
Why own it
It is a hundred pages and it is the one you lend. The value of having it is the argument it ends quickly in a room: it gives a team shared language for the moment somebody wants to add one more thing.
Who it is for
Product and interface designers, and anyone trying to talk a founder out of a feature.
Opens a search on AbeBooks, a network of independent and antiquarian sellers, which is where a good part of this shelf has to be found, because it is out of print.
Read next
Chosen because they argue with this one, not because a machine noticed they share a category.
