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September 20, 2007
Maeda's Mishaps
This is probably my third read of maeda's thoughts on reduction, and upon each read, i find his prescriptive tone on the subject more and more like a recipe for chicken soup. Arguably, there is a tendency, especially in novice designers to flood the stage (be it a product, a page, a canvas..etc) with an inclusive compulsion to show everything and a fear of 'leaving things out.' However, shrinking-hiding-embodying all of our designs doesn't say much for consumer-driven/user-generated/conscience design. Perhaps it works well for the next ipod, the next imac, or the next (insert apple product here), but creating designs based upon these preconceived assumptions that we all want smaller/more complex/minimalistic devices seems to just perpetuate a current trend instead of allowing the next wave of aesthetic design to surge on in.
For the most part, I can see the validity in nearly every point that Maeda suggests, but most likely the presentation of them is where I run into problems. I don't think that reductive or simplistic design can adhere to a check list of dos an donts and voila! there you have it. I think that closer attention to the reception-side of the design may have been a bit more useful.
Posted by Hatti at September 20, 2007 04:31 PM