LAWS OF SIMPLICITY
The task for this project was designing a set of three books based on the Laws of Simplicity, by John Maeda. When tackling a big project such as this one, it is important to look at the content of the book and how that will inform the design decisions.
The original book discusses how technology has made everything overly complicated and how simplicity equals sanity. The layout, grid, and type decisions were made with this concept in mind to further prove the point of the author's words. In the layout, the white space is used to let the words do the “talking” and large pull quotes are used for the important information. The three book designs are not identical but connected through these informed design decisions: simple layouts, large images, and the same typefaces (but used slightly differently for the context of that specific book). For example, in the third book which contains images, only the large type for pull quotes is used. This emphasizes the meaning of the words as being important, and makes connections to the other three books.
There were many positive takeaways from this project, and many skills learned as well. Some of those being: making a cohesive system of books with a large amount of content, using paragraph and character styles in InDesign, laying out a large book, creating a design system based on a book or concept, and having that concept shine through not just with the words written on the page but in the design itself.
The original book discusses how technology has made everything overly complicated and how simplicity equals sanity. The layout, grid, and type decisions were made with this concept in mind to further prove the point of the author's words. In the layout, the white space is used to let the words do the “talking” and large pull quotes are used for the important information. The three book designs are not identical but connected through these informed design decisions: simple layouts, large images, and the same typefaces (but used slightly differently for the context of that specific book). For example, in the third book which contains images, only the large type for pull quotes is used. This emphasizes the meaning of the words as being important, and makes connections to the other three books.
There were many positive takeaways from this project, and many skills learned as well. Some of those being: making a cohesive system of books with a large amount of content, using paragraph and character styles in InDesign, laying out a large book, creating a design system based on a book or concept, and having that concept shine through not just with the words written on the page but in the design itself.
