#irischu

The book is structured into 10 laws and 3 keys. Law 1 - 3 are the basics of being simple. The principles such as reduce, organize and time are the most obvious ways to make our life simpler and lighter. But things are not always that easy, therefore law 4 - 6 continues to talk about some intermediate principles of simplicity. By learning, things feel simpler to us. By comparing with complexity, simplicity seems even more important. By knowing the context, the value of simplicity become higher. Law 7 - 9 step even further and discuss some deep concepts related to simplicity. Trust the authority makes things much simpler than it actually is. But it is also necessary to know that sometimes some extent of complexity is inevitable. The last law is called “THE ONE” and indicates that simplicity is actually about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful. It is a new law but also an excellent summary as well as integration of all the laws mentioned earlier.

The three keys mentioned in the end of the book is like three side notes that worth noticing for this topic. Key 1 discusses the art of keeping things away, which might be an annotation of the law of differentiation. Key 2 shares the value of openness and seems relevant to the law of emotion and context. Key 3 talks a little about the relationship between simplicity and sustainability, which could be regarded as supplementary readings for the law of reduce and organize.

From my perspective, this book is a great reading not only because of its wise and comprehensive coverage of the topic, but also because it is a collection of John Maeda’s stories, reflections, and philosophies. The readers can easily notice between the lines that he is a keen observer of everyday life. He is constantly reading, listening, and reflecting from every detail of his design, technology, and personal life experiences.

The book also seems to me have a strong internal connection with eastern cultures. The concept of animism comes from traditional Japanese culture and explains the power of emotion perfectly. Besides, the appreciation of concepts like small, fragile, light, empty, and humble goes with the eastern philosophy as well. This mix of eastern and western perspective brings a different angle to the topic and makes the book apart from a simple checklist of dos and donts.

Some people might argue that the book is not very applicable for design practice; however, from my point of view, it is all relevant to design, design thinkings particularly. The concepts of balance, emptiness, and contrast are consistent discussions in design. The laws of simplicity is actually a way of thinking with priorities and hierarchies; and it is also a methodology of making things simpler in both our designs and lives.

The book is titled Wim Crouwel Alphabets.This strongly indicates the emphasis of typography and enthusiasm for forms in Crouwel’s design works. The designs included ranges from Crouwel’s early times in the career to his most memorable pieces. For each design, no introduction is provided like the other collection books usually do. The author Kees Broos interviewed Wim Crouwel for each design and that particular part of the interview becomes the introduction of the work. All the conversation is about a specific design work. This brings dynamic to the contents and also brings readers a lot of behind the scenes stories. Personally, from these interviews I get the chances to look into and learn from the processes, the thinkings and also the strugglings of his designs.

The interviews and the final design always juxtapose on each spread so that readers can compare and observe the works with the words. Some of the answers even respond to my long-lasting questions about design. For instance, when talking about the poster Crouwel designed in the fall of 1956 for an exhibition of two years’ new acquisitions by the Van Abbe Museum, he mentioned the relationship of principles and deviations in his design. This is the question I often struggle myself and Crouwel answered it with wisdom and honesty. He said that sometimes we tend to stick to a structure once we figured that out. But in the meanwhile, it seems slight deviation makes the work look even attractive. It is always tricky to decide when to follow the construction and when to follow the aesthetics.

Crouwel also talked a lot about analysis, reduction and rhythm in his works. As he mentioned himself, he has obsessive neurosis for letters and forms. He would really look into details like the diagonal endings, letter spacings and circular forms in letterform like ‘a’ and ‘R’. The rigorous grid and obsession about the mathematical analysis are the features and keys to Crouwel’s work. However, by focus on reduction and rhythm, his work also reveals an emotion rather than industrialized coldness. In his well-known ‘cut-up’ calendar for the Van der Geer printing company, Crouwel integrated the rhythm of seven days in a week with the letterforms of Akzidenz Grotesk. He used words as images and created beautiful forms from just cutting and recombining the letterforms.

In the end of this book, there are also type specimens for all the typefaces Crouwel designed. In that part, it is obvious to see how rigorous yet elegant all these forms are, especially after reading all the interviews. The typefaces resonant with Crouwel’s words and speak loud for him as a designer that impacted numerous designers including myself.

The book contains three parts: theory, media and history. The articles come from different phases of their design careers for over 10 years. In the theory section, the topics range from modern typography to culture impacts and even punctuations. The media section uses quite a lot graphics to support contents mainly in the mass communication field. The last section is organized by a timeline of American graphic design history and provides several case studies throughout the past.

The topic of theory, media and history all sound quite big and serious, however, the reading is in fact full of joy. It is probably because of the unique perspective and historical insight. The interpretation of the interrelations between graphic design, mass media, psychology and philosophy seems to me the most engaging element of this book. In the essay, Language of Dreams, Lupton and Miller start with the dream theory from Freud and develop into the concept of rebus. This concept is then connected to the logographic writing systems like Japanese and Chinese as well as the symbol systems in various levels. In another chapter, Discipline of Design, multiple ideas from Michel Foucault are interacted with different insights regarding design discipline positions in general. These interconnections allow reader to easily associate the context and even recollect the thinkings later.  

Besides the content, the design of the book also looks very effective to me. The three sections are separated not only by chapters but also by different paper types. The theory section uses regular white matte paper while the media section uses glossy paper probably to support all the color images as well as the impression of commercialization. In the last section, off white paper is used most likely to serve the context of historical cases. In terms of page layout design, some essays also stand out because of the arrangements of texts and images. In the essay Low and High, the idea that there should have no lines between low and high cultures is realized by using the whole sentence as the divider and has it separate the spread in various ways on all the pages of this essay. Not to mention the well-known article Modern Hieroglyphs which literally do the things they are talking about by replacing some of the words with icons.

Overall, from a designer perspective, this is a great book to look into some underpinnings of the discipline and discover other connotations of the design practice. Furthermore, I think it also reminds designers that we should do more writing and research besides the design work. These essays from Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller has already set a strong example and standard. This book is not only valuable for design insiders, it is also a stimulating resource for anyone who is interested in this area. The words are powerful and by writing, thoughts, ideas and innovations could get interchanged to the design community and even the rest of the world.