Minimal design, the principle of stripping out superfluous design detail, is the pre-eminent design language of our age. It can be seen everywhere from consumer goods and services, interior design and architecture. It’s even permeated society, with the promise of streamlining the complexities of our lives with neat solutions. It’s had a reasonably long innings already and there seems to be no sign of it abating. Is this an issue, or are we just living forevermore in an age of ‘good’ design?
It didn’t use to be this way. When I was a graduate industrial designer in the late 90s (showing my age a bit), cutting-edge design was practiced by companies such as Philips and Alessi. Their ‘vision of the future’ was organic shaped, built in a range of vivid colours, and often had little feet and faces to add character, as evidenced by the Philips Alessi workshop line range of home appliances. The advent of affordable 3D CAD in the 1990s allowed designers complete freedom to create flowing, organic shapes, and have them precisely realised in plastic. Understandably perhaps, designers embraced this freedom with gusto.
Minimal design at that time was merely an historical footnote, usually practiced by Scandinavians. I remember writing a college essay about Bang & Olufsen’s Beogram 4000 turntable, designed by Jacob Jensen in the early seventies, nostalgically admiring its quaint simplicity even though I wasn’t born when it first came out. So when the first generation iPod was released in 2001, it seemed like a refreshing return to that era, and a rejection of all the puffy black plastic which had permeated mainstream electronics by then. A white and silver box with a single dial, singular purpose, yet vast power – all of your music in your pocket. The iPod remained niche for a couple of years still, but it was a prescient glimpse of the actual future to come.
Let’s go even further back in time to explain how we got here. Minimal design has its roots in traditional Japanese design, Modernism and the Bauhaus school at the turn of the 20th century.
The Bauhaus was especially influential as it brought together all arts and crafts under one roof and practiced what it called the ‘international style.’ This style was embodied in products, art and architecture that rejected needless ornamentation and aimed for harmony between the function of an object and its appearance, hence the origin of the phrase ‘form follows function.’ More recently there has been a resurgence of the appeal of Dieter Rams, chief design officer for Braun between 1960 and 1995.
His ten principles for good design have inspired many designers, especially the last principle – Good design is as little design as possible. Because of his well-documented influence on Jony Ive, chief design officer at Apple, we now see a vast number of devices ape this style (because where Apple lead, others follow). When Jony Ive took over user interface design at Apple and adopted ‘Flat Design’ (which features flat, simple colours, simple line icons and sans serif text) the domination of minimal design seemed effectively complete.
Now, everywhere you look you will see the same photo-fit style. In devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, TVs, Hi-Fi, and wearables, there’s a ubiquity of straight edges, black glass fronts, glossy plastics and machined metal. Not much is outwardly given away about what these devices do (usually because they’re in power-save mode), and not much differentiates one brand from another, even down to the user interface level.
So, is all of this simplicity and similarity really an issue? Let’s look at some of the pros and cons…
In defense of minimal design
First of all, many of the similarities between consumer electronic devices are driven by other contributing factors than just minimal design principles. The whole front face of a smartphone for example is dominated by a touch-screen, and realistically a touch-screen is the only sensible way to access the multitude of functionality that smartphones offer – could you imagine going back to keys now? Because of this multitude of functionality, a mainstream generic (and therefore simple) approach to the overall design of such an object makes perfect sense.
Secondly, I think the adoption of minimalist design principles has led to an abundance of good design in consumer electronics. Most mid-high level smartphones are beautifully crafted and built, with a real appreciation for high quality materials. Their touch user interfaces allow endless interaction possibilities, and for the most part those interactions are intuitive and effortless. Pair this with the sheer power of the underlying technology and it’s obvious we’ve never had it so good.
I was never a fan of irreverent design or the notion of adding superfluous details anyway, so for me this has been an era of good design overall. By stripping out all but the most essential features, and making sure such features are appropriate and streamlined, we’ve been exposed to deeply compelling and desirable products. This has set the bar very high, with consumers having very high expectations of design as a result, which is no bad thing for us designers.
The challenges minimal design faces
However much I like the renaissance of minimalism, ubiquity can have its detractions. Even I didn’t expect to see quite so much of, well, quite so little. There seems to be a growing lack of choice among consumers. Why switch from one brand to another when there is no perceived difference? How can these products reflect our personalities meaningfully when they are so generic and bland? Self-expression is not exactly encouraged in this one-size-fits-all world view.
The smartphone market has been haunted by the issue of plagiarism recently, with the battle between Samsung and Apple bruising both companies credibility. Simplicity, as it turns out, is not easy to protect. Trying to hold a patent for the ornamental design of a rectangular slab with a button is a little unfair anyway, and certainly rather restrictive for the rest of the market.
Another challenge minimal design faces is the ability of devices and interfaces to remain minimal through incremental iterations. When such stripped back devices disrupt markets with their streamlined approaches they are rightly celebrated. But when they go through further iterations, more and more features get added back in to force us to upgrade. When this happens the device can stray too far from its minimal origins. I would classify iTunes in this camp. It used to be simple and elegant when it just serviced my iPod on my PC. Not anymore – now it’s a hybrid portal for all media, and I have to battle through layers of interface to get what I need done. Its name doesn’t make sense anymore, and it isn’t even consistent with how media is separated out under different apps within IOS. At the point where functions become so numerous that they must be hidden to keep user interfaces from becoming visually cluttered, there is a real danger the user experience will suffer.
In terms of usability, sharp edges, heavy materials and straight lines aren’t the most comfortable to use on a day-to-day basis. We humans aren’t built as such after all, yet we still have to physically interact with these devices. I do yearn for the organic forms of products from the 90s sometimes. Usability can often take a back seat regarding the location of keys and buttons as well. If some designers are purely concerned with getting their visual ducks in a row they won’t want to break out of those rows for the sake of user comfort.
A final point to make is minimal design isn’t appropriate for every application. Automotive design has remained exempt for example, favouring overt ‘go fast’ styling. Consumer devices with singular, specialised purposes, such as SLR cameras, music technology products bristling with knobs (check out the Moog Minimoog Voyager XL), and a small subset of wearable devices with interesting textural stories such as Jawbone remain somewhat immune also. The work I do at Cambridge Consultants is largely in the medical field, and in spite of my minimalist leanings, I cannot make an argument for minimalism if it negatively affects usability. We often have to strike a balance between simplicity and overt features to aid users, very often leading to distinctive and expressive designs as a result, such as the ExtaviPro 30G Auto-injector for Novartis.
What does the future hold then?
Usually when a single style permeates across everything, consumers get bored and seek something new, and brands race to bring products to market that satiate that need. This doesn’t seem to be the case with minimal design. As stated previously, there are compelling universal principles of good design such as simplicity, attention to detail and material use that underpin it. Minimal design is especially appropriate in the consumer electronics space dominated by touch-screen interfaces, and this is the real crux of the situation. It would take an entire interaction paradigm shift away from touch to justify supplanting minimal design with another design language.
Perhaps this is on the horizon though. As the lines blur in the human-machine interface, and smart devices are no longer held or even worn by us, but are in our line of sight or within us, then new design languages will seem sensible to adopt. Maybe bio-mimicry, the practice of following nature’s patterns, would seem a logical choice given we are biological beings in this case? It has already made inroads in terms of material design and car aerodynamics – the McLaren P1 supercar design was reportedly inspired by the form of a Sailfish to improve efficiency for example. Whatever the future holds however, I have no doubt that the principles that have been established by good designers in the past century will continue to be adopted. For now, less remains more.
