Finally, we are learning that simplicity equals sanity. We’re rebelling against technology that’s too complicated, Dvd movie players with way too many selections, and software followed by 75-megabyte “read me” guides. The iPod’s clean gadgetry has made simpleness hip. But sometimes we find ourselves swept up in the simpleness paradox: we wish something that’s easy and simple to use, but also will all the complicated things we might ever want to buy to accomplish. In The Laws and regulations of Simplicity, John Maeda presents ten laws for about The Laws and regulations of Simplicity, managing simpleness and complexity in business, technology, and design – recommendations for needing less and actually getting more.

Maeda – a teacher in MIT’s Press Laboratory and a world-renowned image designer – explores the query of how we can redefine the idea of “improved” such that it doesn’t always mean something more, something added on.

Maeda’s first legislation of simplicity is reduce. It isn’t necessarily beneficial to add technology features just because we can. As well as the features that people do have should be organized (Rules 2) inside a sensible hierarchy so users aren’t sidetracked by features and functions they don’t really need. But simplicity is not less just for the sake of less. Skip forward to Rules 9: “failure: Some things can never be produced basic.” Maeda’s concise guide to simplicity in the digital age group shows us how this idea could be a cornerstone of agencies and their products – how it could get both business and technology. We can learn to simplify without sacrificing comfort and ease and indicating, and we are able to achieve the balance described in Rules 10. This laws, which Maeda telephone calls “the main one,” tells us: “Simplicity is approximately subtracting the most obvious, and adding the meaningful.”