Knolling

Was "Knolling" A Part Of Apple's Massive Success?

No, it's not the new planking, coning or breading cats. "Knolling" goes far back beyond bored university students finding funny ways to take pictures of themselves (or their cats).

As its Wikipedia definition states: "Knolling is the process of arranging like objects in parallel or 90 degree angles as a method of organization."

The term was coined by a janitor, Andrew Kromelow, who worked in Frank Gehry's furniture fabrication shop. At the time, the prolific architectural genius was designing chairs for Knoll, Inc., a design firm known for its angular furniture that has over 40 pieces on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

During his tidying up of the shop, Kromelow would arrange Gehry's tools at right angles on surfaces and called the style of organization "knolling" after the angular designs of Knoll, Inc.

(Just as an aside, the term for what Kromelow did should be called "Good Will Hunt-ing" someone). The benefit of knolling is that all objects are clearly visible and ordered for optimal use.

The method caught on with contemporary artist Tom Sachs when he spent two years working in Gehry's shop. Knolling made a profound impact on Sachs' process and art, leading him to adapt it into a personal mantra "Always be Knolling," a reference to Glen Garry Glen Ross's famous line "Always be Closing." (I don't even want to think of how much worse off Shelley Levene would have been if he had tried to "Always Be Knolling" rather than "Always Be Closing.")

Sachs expanded on the mantra in his 2009 studio manual entitled 10 Bullets:

"Bullet II: Always Be Knolling (ABK)

1. Scan your environment for materials, tools, books, music, etc. which are not in use.

1. Put away everything not in use. If you aren't sure, leave it out.

2. Group all 'like' objects.

3. Align or square all objects to either the surface they rest on, or the studio itself."

Most recently, visual designer Andrew Kim created an iBook on the concept of knolling called "90 Degrees" celebrating it as "a visual compositional tool that can be used by graphic designers, photographers, cinematographers and others for a distinct and timeless aesthetic. Knolling can also be used as a mapping tool that brings order to the complex world we live in, making it a method of visual organizational for anyone."

Knolling seems like a concept for those who appear to be literally in love with minimal design. The most recent post on Andrew Kim's personal blog "minimallyminimal.com" is a passionate ode to the iPod mini in which he calls it a "celestial object" and "the most beautiful thing [he] had ever held." His descriptions of the device are easily sexual and the accompanying images are like a soft core porn photo shoot of an iPod. It's a declaration of love reminiscent of "Her" and wholly confirms a longstanding personal belief that some people find precision sexually arousing.

He has a point though. Looking at his pictures of all the highly knollable Apple products knolled up alongside each other, displaying such perfect knollability as if they were designed just for knolling, it's hard to deny that they are pretty sexy.

The texture, precision, crispness, simplicity and perfectly placed curves of Apple design certainly swept everyone off their feet from the moment that first iPod slipped into the palms of millions of consumers. And perhaps without many of us knowing it, "high degree of knollability" was high up on their list of design priorities as well.

We may not all be visually gifted touters of minimalist design, but for the naturally disorganized, such as myself, a little bit of knolling here and there might be just the trick to tightening up procedures in your work or home life.

(And for those of you who'd rather make fun of knolling as I have been on the brink of doing for most of this article, here's Conan O'Brien's satirical take on knolling called "Stackenblochen").

-@ecoverton