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5
Simplicity:
Why It Matters
As our daily lives have become more complex, more and more people look to
incorporate simplicity into their lives. But finding simplicity in the workplace
seems harder these days. Professionally, people are terrified of being simple for
fear of being labeled a lightweight. So “when in doubt, add more” is often the
guiding principle.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding of simplicity and what it means
to be simple today. Many people confuse simple, for example, with simplistic,
simplism, or that which is dumbed down to the point of being deceptive or
misleading. To some people, simple means a kind of oversimplification of
an issue, which ignores complexities and creates obfuscation and outright
falsehoods. Politicians are often guilty of this type of oversimplification. But
this is not the kind of simplicity I am talking about. The kind of simplicity I
mean does not come from a place of laziness or ignorance; rather, it comes
from an intelligent desire for clarity that gets to the essence of an issue, which
is not easy to do.
Simplicity—along with other precepts such as restraint and naturalness—
are key ideas found in Zen and the Zen arts: arts such as the tea ceremony,
haiku, ikebana, and sumi-e, which can take many years or, indeed, a lifetime
to master. There is nothing easy about them, although when performed by a
master, they may seem beautifully simple. It is difficult to give a definition of
simplicity, but when I say we need to create messages and design visuals that
are simple, I am not talking about taking shortcuts, ignoring complexities, or
endorsing meaningless sound bites and shallow content. When I use the word
simple (or simplicity), I am referring to the term as essentially synonymous with
clarity, directness, subtlety, essentialness, and minimalism. Designers, such
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