Simple Design VS Complicated Design

Designers Signature

Every Designer has their own way of designing and their own style but sometimes you need to know what the boundaries are of the project you are dealing with. I am going to discuss this using two methods, Simple design vs complicated design.

Simple is Elegant

Always remember that simple design is an elegance worth striving for and if you can achieve this correctly using minimal colour and elements it can be extremely effective. When you start with a design you always start with the main element and work from there. Now people have a tendency to over clutter a design with too many elements, fonts or colours. Start your design “simple and easy”. Most often you will get a better reaction from a simple design than from a complicated design because the viewer does not have too many elements to focus on.

Begin with traditional design on paper

Start your design on paper. Always start on paper and be patient before getting on the computer, you will be able to experiment with shapes forms fonts and colour to get a solid concept before jumping onto your desktop.

Go easy on the colour to begin

Once you get to your computer, work your design in black on a white background. Often a design will look perfect with only one colour but you won’t be able to see this if you flood your design with colour from the start. If you are working on a logo for example, you have to keep in mind that it has to be able to work across a variety of applications, from digital collateral to being printed on a T-Shirt or even on a billboard. Colour can become a hassle in situations of application so limiting yourself to 3 colours will make sure that your design is as effective as it can be.

When you are done recreating your design on the computer you will have to decide whether or not it NEEDS colour. But before adding colour, consider that you can use negative space, different fonts and placing to create emphasis before you even need to use colour.

Below are a few examples of working with colour and how it can be your friend in certain situations. Shell went from a black logo to a two tone logo that draws attention and that creates emphasis on what and who they are.

Shell logo 1900
As you can see with this logo, they only used one colour but the amount of detail they tried to capture made the design ineffective.

Shell logo 1948
Now they started moving in a better direction, selecting a duel tone logo with white text but the only fall down is the fact that the detail is not yet simplified.

Shell logo 1999
In 1999 they struck gold. They removed the text from the logo focusing only on the symbol to communicate a message, they simplified the detail and created stylized lines and in effect they got a logo that became timeless.

K.I.S.S in design

Work according to the K.I.S.S principle, it stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. So if you are ever working on a design and you feel unsure of the look or it just feels off, apply the K.I.S.S principle. Take out any elements that do not communicate a message and abandon colours. Go back to the base of the design and work it back up applying only elements that you feel are necessary and that serve a purpose.

Negative spacing

Another principle you can explore is that of negative spacing. If you design a logo or icon or anything for that matter, look at the white space around your design. Often you will be able to manipulate this in such a way that it can be a separate element when the viewer looks closer. It also gives your design space to breath.

Below are some examples of how artists used negative space to communicate a message, there will be an element that you see immediately and then you will see the second one and so on. As you can see the designs are completely uncluttered and communicate a message effectively.

Song Bird design

Moby Dick Design

Now when you put minimalistic colour and negative spacing together, the end product can be extremely effective. Drawing attention and communicating the desired message. In essence that is what we as designers do, we communicate a message through design and if this can’t be achieved, the design is flawed and will be reworked and reworked until the desired message is successfully communicated.

So next time you get eager on starting a design for a client, take a breath and step back. Just like reading a neatly typed letter vs. reading a sloppy hand written letter, proper simple design communicates a message easier than what an unnecessarily over cluttered design does. Keep it simple and start with the main focus of your design and remember to only use more elements and colours when extremely necessary. Make it easy for the general public to spot your design from the rest but keep it simple enough to communicate a message at a glance of the design.

Shell Logo sourced from: www.retireat21.com/entrepreneurship/17-evolutions-of-logos

Moby Dick and Songbird sourced from: www.creativebloq.com/art/art-negative-space-8133765