The Desire of Simplicity

"As I become increasingly sensitive to those aspects of design which reinforce repressive attitudes and behavior, I increasingly question the desirability of simplicity and clarity.

Were the mass media to include contradictions; were its images to contain suggestions rather than statements, the viewer could make an effort to bridge the gap, to interpolate, extrapolate, participate." -Some Aspects of Design... by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

This is exactly the point I was trying to make when I got into an arguement with my professors during the graphic design review. This statement could not be more true. There is no better advertising than advertising that makes you think about it minutes, hours, days after you've seen it...but really, how many of those kinds of advertisements do you see? Not many.

Granted, there is a place for this kind of advertising. It's not really necessary for an advertisement selling Reynolds Wrap to make you think about the ad for days...unless the design for it was SO well done that you think about it for that reason. There doesn't NEED to be a deep meaning behind Reynolds Wrap to get you to buy it...you need it, you're gonna buy it. Products such as that just need to have a better design and marketability than their competitors.

However...there are products that are everyday products that because of their incredible advertising DO make you think about them for days...and not because you are trying to understand something they are trying to say but because of how well they were designed. I have an example. The Pontiac commercials. The design, the music, the presentation of their product, all of the aspects work together to pull off an amazing advertisement.

ANYWAY...got totally off topic there. By a user participating with the advertisement, it becomes more effective. As designers, it's hard for us sometimes, to not break things down to their one core component, not to break the idea down into fragments. We are taught to do this consciously from the beginning of our schooling.

Unfortunately, by doing this, we often times break it down so far to the point that it is only conveying ONE of the ideas that we are trying to get across rather than all of them. This is what limits the viewer/audience from interpreting for themselves the whole picture...we have narrowed it down for them to the point that they no longer have any other interpretation to get from the design than what we have spelled out for them.

I'll end with a good quote from Levrant de Bretteville, "A more diffused manner of organizing material maintains enough complexity, subtlety and ambiguity to entice the readers who normally dart away with someone else's encapsulated vision, rather than remaining long enough and openly enough with the idea to make it their own." Couldn't have said it better myself.