An important aspect of the job of a designer is not only to hone their skills to create, but perhaps more importantly, edit. When designing in the real world, for the sake of budget, longevity and manufacturability, taking an idea and paring it down to its core essentials is imperative—or is it?

A thoughtful discussion that recently surfaced via the Core77 discussion boards stirred up a debate about the idea of minimalism and form. Designer bcpid writes:



Throughout my career, I've increasingly come to the conclusion that the more I can focus on proportion and the elimination of as many design elements as possible, and the less I can focus on form (except for trying to reduce or simplify and universalize the form as much as possible / kill decorative elements or anything that would constitute fashion) the better off most designs will be. Early on I used to see complex shapes, or crazy, vehicle-inspired or heavily sculptural forms as something to aspire to, but today I find almost anything more than bare minimalism and reduction, reduction, reduction to be inappropriate for most products that need to live in a variety of settings for any length of time. It's almost like how much can you make the product disappear. I feel like products should almost always be visually simplified to an extent that you aren't compounding the clutter problem people already have.

So the question is, is it always best to pare down a design to as few details as possible? Or is this question more complicated than it may seem at first glance? Several readers within the forum considered this a statement worth analyzing further.

Minimalism doesn't always address the importance of a user's emotion

"I do not agree with this sentiment. Your version of minimalism does not always address a user's emotional needs/wants. Evocative forms do. That doesn't mean you have to design a bunch of swoopy forms, but it does mean that you need to consider the emotional element when designing most consumer products.

A very good proof of this is the car market. A Honda Civic is a great car by most practical metrics. It's reliable, gets great gas mileage, and accelerates reasonably fast enough for all but the most extreme practical purposes. A BMW 328i is almost twice as expensive, is way less reliable, gets worse gas mileage, more expensive to maintain, etc. etc. But if you asked most people which car they'd rather have if money was no object, they'd say the BMW. The reason for that is because it's emotionally more fulfilling to own one. They're more fun to drive, they look way cooler, they have a bunch of very nice features (that are by and large unnecessary), and they're a status symbol." - John_Mariello