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Graphic Design and "Simple Elegance"

Graphic Design and "Simple Elegance"
Graphic Design and "Simple Elegance"

Here's a humorous but instructive video showing the virtues and limitations of simple elegance as a design principle. It's a Google video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=36099539665548298

That's a snapshot above of the first pane of (hypothetical) MS redesign of the iPod packaging, which is quite cool. The video makes me wonder, too, about how graphic design for product packaging is tied to distribution channels. If you're not desperate to have the product sell itself in real space, what happens to your design choices? What about products that don't need to have shelf appeal? How does the desire to convey information sometimes squelch effective visual rhetoric?

Submitted by David Blakesley on Tue, 2007-01-23 03:52.
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Amylea's picture
Submitted by Amylea on Tue, 2007-01-23 10:12.

The Amazon.com "Marketplace" pages are a good example of this; I've passed up many a good offer because the thumbnail image just didn't inspire me to click on it. In many ways, the products I see for sale online rely too much on the old catalog desgin principles: Show product in a white space, perhaps propping it up to tweak perspective a little. If clothing, select moderately attractive model who stands in one of a dozen or so poses. The choices seem to multiply, but no one seems to have a good handle on it. Thumbnail images allow for minimal design elements--you'd think it'd be easier.


My visual instincts are that
Morgan R.'s picture
Submitted by Morgan R. on Thu, 2007-01-25 09:34.

My visual instincts are that the original packaging was far more appealing than the new packaging. The new was overly colorful, no longer drew on the simple straight lines. It made the object inside feel much more complicated, which makes me less likely to buy it. I did like the fold out page on the back: interactive movement orriented packaging makes me happy. I like when there are foldy coupons on things... I play with them.  Mad Morgan Rackem (aka Morgan Reitmeyer)