For a minimum circular design

By Xavier Vives

Three aspects of the design that are traditionally studied, have been taken: the concept of function associated with that of necessity, the concept of form associated also with the production and the concept of communication and semantics associated with the symbol and the aesthetics. These three concepts have been crossed with the three R's of ecology, that is to say: reduce, reuse and recycle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Editorial Bubok Publishing
• Release date: Apr 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9788468536767

Book preview

FOR A MINIMUM

CIRCULAR DESIGN

Xavier Vives

I would like to thank everyone who, by abusing familiarity, friendship and acquaintance, I have bothered by asking for corrections, comments, opinions and criticisms.

And even more so, those who have spurred me on to go ahead with a project which was too long in terms of time.

As people tend to say, this book wouldn’t have been possible without them.

Thank you very much to all of you.

Image credits:

In spite of the effort made to get in contact with the owners of the author rights of the some images published, it has not always been possible. The owners can get in touch with the author at [e-mail].

The author will be more than grateful to receive any contribution and/or correction of any mistakes found.

Emilianes slippers by Ana Mir and Emili Padrós for Nani Marquina®. Photo: Albert Font.

Globo teapot by Delphin Design. Illustration: X. Vives.

André Ricard ice tongs. Illustration: X. Vives.

Harrison’s Chronometer H5. Photo: Racklever. From Wikimedia Commons.

Simple structurally, but it can carry out a large number of functions. Photo: A. Sendra.

Unboxing IKEA® furniture. All you need to assemble. Photo: Vanessa Amat Gimeno.

Charles de Gaulle airport signpost. Illustration: X. Vives.

An abnormal value it breaks the visual uniformity. Illustration: X. Vives.

Original Buff® instructions. The How 2 Wear icons are a copyright and a trademark of ORIGINAL BUFF, SA.

Apollo chaise longe by Ross Lovegrove for Driade®. Photo: with permission.

Sacco by Gatti, Paolini and Teodoro for Zanotta®. Photo: Courtesy of Zanotta SpA – Italy.

Astroscan® becomes flexible, manageable and supple, tolerating the needs. Illustration: X. Vives.

Jar Tops by Jorre van Ast for Royal VKB®. Photo: with permission.

Burdick Group modular system for Herman Miller®. Photo: with permission.

Oxo® Y Peeler. Photo: with permission.

Silhouette® TMA by Gerhard Fuchs, the most comfortable glasses I’ve ever worn. Photo: X. Vives.

With just a few touches we can satisfy some needs. Photo: A. Sendra.

Atlantic Sea Nettle jellyfish. Photo: William Warby.

Medusoids created with drops of ink. Photo: A. Riba.

Olympic stadium in Munich by Frei Otto. Photo: Timothy Brown.

Bubbles adopt the shape of the least area possible. Photo: A. Sendra.

Plateau laws. Illustration: X. Vives.

Colònia Güell model by Antoni Gaudí. Photo: Vicens Vilarrubias.

Ruled plain that forms a parabolic form. 3D illustration: X. Vives.

Tea stirrer made of bamboo, the shape comes from the material of just one piece and due to the constructive process. Photo: A. Sendra.

Entrance of a traditional Japanese house. Photo: JayWalsh. From Wikimedia Commons.

Nimbus glider design by Klaus Holighaus for Schempp-Hirth. Photo: Aleksandr Markin. From Wikimedia Commons.

The process of integration. Illustration: X. Vives.

Cockpit of the Airbus® A380. Photo: Naddsy. From Wikimedia Commons.

Atoms of xenon on a surface of nickel forming IBM logo. Photo: IBM®.

A signed Alec Issigonis sketch of Mini layout. BMW® archive.

The McArthur microscope of the Open University. Illustration and photo: X. Vives.

Helios. Photo: NASA, Nick Galante.

Yurt in construction with roof poles in place. Photo: Wikipedia en:User:Tkn20.

From the sea to space, NASA has been looking at inflation-deployed expandable structures as one possible building block for a lunar base. Photo: NASA, Jeff Caplan.

A wooden spoon can last more than one hundred years because it is elementary. Photo: X. Vives.

Interior of the Canon® iRC2380i printer. Photo: X. Vives.

Diagrams fom Apollo Program Summary Report. NASA Headquarters Historical Reference Collection.

Lunar Module LiOH canister compared with the Command Module canister. Photo: John Fongheiser of Historic Space Systems.

The astronaut Jack Swigert doing the assembly, it can be seen how the cartridge is held together with adhesive tape. Photo: NASA.

Cot-Cot briefcase from Ecopole. Photo: A. Sendra.

Radio made from discarded cans by V. Papanek and G. Seegers for UNESCO programme for Southeast Asia. Photo: ©Victor J. Papanek Foundation.

Maximum concinnity. Illustration: X. Vives.

Guido Reni composition. Illustration: X. Vives.

New Beetle concinnity. Illustration: X. Vives.

Magic Mouse, Apple®. Photo: Yutaka Tsutano. From Wikimedia Commons.

We interpret the sensations when the brain structures them. Photo: R. C. James.

Piet Hein super-egg. 3D illustration: X. Vives.

Ambiguous shapes the result of synthesis. Illustration: X. Vives.

Hakuho Hirayama, La aguada japonesa. Sumi-e, © Copyright ParramonPaidotribo―World Rights, Published by Parramon Paidotribo, S.L., Badalona, Spain.

Plan of the Pavilion Barcelona by Mies van der Rohe. Illustration: X. Vives.

Views of the same Pavilion. Photo: Vicens. From Wikimedia Commons.

Views of the same Pavilion. Photo: ©Pepo Segura, Fundació Mies van der Rohe.

Inuit sculpture. Private collection.

M-Lídia House by RCR Arquitectes. Photo@ E. Pons.

Canal building loft. Sofa, table, basins and lighting by Claudio Silvestrin. Copyright © 2011 Claudio Silvestrin Architects.

Louvre-Lens museum by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa. Photo: Julien Lanoo.

La Grande Arche de la Défense by Johan Otto Von Spreckelsen with the ‘Nuage’ by Paul Andreu. Photo: Coldcreation.

Charlie Rivel actuation in 1967. Photo: From Wikimedia Commons.

Remote of AppleTV® with voice and touch control. Photo: Andreas Lakso. From Wikimedia Commons.

Fòrum building by Herzog & De Meuron. Photo: Canaan. From Wikimedia Commons.

Many possibles curves in the Wassily chair. Composition X. Vives.

Types of ornament and rhetorical elements. Illustration: X. Vives.

Forms with concinnity and ambiguity. Illustration: X. Vives.

Valentine typewriter by Ettore Sottsass and Perry A. King for Olivetti®. Photo: Davide Casali, Alessandro Gabbiadini, Marcello Mainardi. From Wikimedia Commons.

Symbols that can be totally enigmatic for people from other cultures. Illustration: X. Vives.

Bathtub used as a flowerpot. Garden and photo by moisellecoccinelle, 2006.

The final Jeep® production model Willys MB (Model B). Image by Ian Cossor Design.

Javacheff and Jeanne-Claude Christo, Wrapped Monument to Cristobal Colon. Private collection.

The Montreal Biosphère by Buckminster Fuller, 1967. Photo: Idej Elixe. From Wikimedia Commons.

The Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe designed in 1945 and constructed in 1951. Photo: Timothy Brown.

ISBN:

DL:

Xavier Vives S. – 2019

Justification and intentions

The aim of this book is to speak about the simplicity linked to design.

Simplicity, paradoxically, is polyhedral and, moreover, it is not the natural state of the world. We would like to understand simplicity from all the points of view that affect us, and in fact it does so in any activity of our lives: in the domestic chores, in the work using new machines, or in the way we relate between family members and companions and colleagues. We are always trying to simplify things, but it turns out that in the end we sacrifice one thing so as to achieve another; we try to simplify complex things and end up complicating other simple ones.

A lineal treatment is not possible, a clear vision which explains to us what simplicity is or can be; we have hints or clues of how to simplify in some settings, but in the majority of times this comes at a price: economic costs, ecological costs, for production, to be understood, or the cost of use, etc. There are possibly no recipes which are applicable to all the aspects involved, and I don’t believe either that we can find any general laws of simplification. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any. The book doesn’t aim to go over all the polyhedrons, and it doesn’t either aim to be a study of design, even though the journey it covers is quite a long one.

The intention is to exemplify a number of basic ideas and provoke a certain concern with regard to the creation and innovation of useful designs; to discourage the fact of doing and venerating designs which are purely formal. I cannot hide the fact that one of the most important motivations has been that of contributing alternatives to creator’s designs that too often, hidden behind a mask of innovation and creativity, have in fact ended up being no more that formal variations but with barely any contents. Change and originality have tended to be rather over-rated, almost as if these were their only values, wanting to follow the rhythm of fashion –the great bluff of the twentieth century. We can however accept that these designs possibly have a function in terms of renovation of the formal repertoire, and that they help with regard to cultural evolution, but given that they have become the most visible face of design, and the most popular ones, it would be convenient to make a call towards «the other design».

Despite the fact that the formal and spectacular author designs or design d’auteur, are the ones which is most published in the media and are also the ones which are most awarded by the institutions concerned about prestige, I nevertheless believe that the design, as the more rationalist trend is understood to be, should be congratulated: currently in any hardware store you can find, for example, anonymous designs in stainless steel that, it’s not hard for me to say, surpass those produced in the paradigmatic Bauhaus. In a great majority of furniture stores you can purchase simple, practical and functional pieces, and we can see increasingly fewer of the so-called «stylistic» ones. The popular taste of the new generations has entered into the culture of the design.

They are those designs that Fukasawa and Morrison call Super Normal¹; that is to say, objects that are not so worried about the design but more about their everyday use and usability. They are objects that have become familiar to us, which are close, pleasant and nice, beyond the normality about which we could say is boring, and also beyond objects which are over-designed. The super normal objects are designs with a taste of the day-to-day, which are evolved, don’t stand out and that, more than anything else, function. Perhaps, at the end of the day, designing simple objects is nothing more than designing Super Normal objects.

In the book, not all the options, methods and ways of designing and simplifying are exemplified, in fact they are not even explained. It would be good if each of the readers could carry out their own research and in this way complete the chart initiated, not so much with the vocation of a cataloguer, but to go in-depth with a task that will be more and more necessary: that of clarifying.

I believe that the challenges of the design of the future are so complex and so big, that they will only be able to be tackled if they are based on a clarifying vision.

I have done a crossover of fields that has been very fruitful, although I think it is legitimate to criticise it due to its arbitrary nature. I have taken three aspects of design that are traditionally studied: the concept of function –associated with the need– the concept of shape or form, also associated with the production, and the concept of communication and semantics, associated with symbols and aesthetics. The three concepts I have crossed over with the «three Rs» of environmentalism; that is to say: to reduce, to reuse and to recycle, and I have left aside other «Rs» and subtleties.

I have been liberal in the interpretation and ways of understanding the crossovers. The questions they have led to were of the type:

Can we talk about reusing functions? Or, where does the reducing or recycling of aesthetics lead us? There were some easy and immediate answers: while with others, they should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt. Overall, however, they seemed to make sense or, at least, they have served to take an overview of a wide range of the issues involved and of the possibilities of design. It’s up to the readers to judge so.

Due to the same fact of being a matrix, the book doesn’t require a lineal reading, despite the fact that there are small introductions and approaches of posed postures with the intention of sharing initial points of view. I recommend, however, to take a look at the table of contents where the matrix is presented, and to use it as a sort of browsing map.

The examples, many times, are not exclusive of an alternative to design, or a way of interpretation, but rather it is the case that examples of good design could fit into more than one chapter, and sometimes I have used them in this way. On other occasions, it is arguable whether they are good examples or not, either due to my lack of knowledge in terms of better examples, or because they are found in a field that is still to be developed.

The notes are just about all bibliographical references and, therefore, they are not necessary for continuing the reading. I have tried to make a narrative which is interrupted as little as possible, except for the captions of the images or some figures or charts. Even though there are many bibliographical references, there are in fact few relevant authors for the reading, and at no stage have I tried to carry out a thorough research regarding the existing opinions about one topic or another, given the fact that I have preferred to focus on those few authors, current or historical, who have clarifying postures, even though they might be arguable. In many topics in which I am by no means an expert, I have explained rather ruthlessly the work of these authors, very much in the hope that I have made a suitably correct synopsis.

Everything that I have written has been on my own account and at my own risk, and no company, brand, designer, author or institution of those I have mentioned has had anything to do with it.

Xavier Vives S.

«Isn’t geometry only coherent when the point doesn’t have a size?

This point, so that everything works, needs to not have a size but nevertheless it occupies a place».

Eduardo Chillida

Questions

Speech at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando,

Madrid, 1994

1. Introduction

1.1. The person and the object

«Thank God for the fact that I haven’t grown up in a house of style […]. A table here, a corrugated table totally lacking in logic, an extendable table with the work of a locksmith which is absolutely horrible. But it was our table, our table! Do you know what that means? Do you know the number of fabulous hours that we spent there? […] And here is the writing desk! And on it there is an ink stain that my sister Herminia made when she was small. And there are the photos of my parents! And what ugly frames they are! But it was a wedding present that was given to them by the workers of my father. This old-fashioned arm chair! Remains of the furniture from the house of my grandmother […]. Each piece of furniture, each thing, each object explains a story, the history of the family. The house was never finished; it evolved with us and we evolved with it.»²

This is how the architect Adolf Loos explained it in 1898. The text expresses well the ties that exist between the people and the objects, and the significance they take on over the years.

The humanity has grown along with the artefacts and objects we have created. These utensils have evolved and changed since then and we have changed with them; we modify them and create new ones, but the objects also change us. Each time we learn to use them, something changes inside us: to handle a pressure cooker, to write with a word processor, to play the violin or to use a file in a masterly way – all of these things modify us and alter the way of life. But also as a means of self-expression, as a manifestation of a status, as a symbol of belonging to a group or as a tool of socialisation. Any which way, the objects enlarge or reduce what we can really do and given that we are depending on what we do, the objects become instruments of adaptation and of transformation.

People and things mutually interfere with each other. The tools, the arms, the clothing, or the housing have modified the way we are, to such an extent that they end up forming part of ourselves; we wouldn’t be who we are if it wasn’t for the series of objects that surround us and that have surrounded us, and that we use and have used³. We know very well how many times an invention has changed history and our perception of our surroundings –just remember the influence of nuclear armament– or that of the car. But we also establish ties and relations in the personal field with the artefacts that help us to form ourselves. The feeling of pride towards the picture we have painted, the nostalgia we feel for the books from our childhood, or the feeling of power when seated on a high cylinder motorbike, they configure us and change us or confirm what we think about ourselves and what we believe that others think about us.

It’s not strange, therefore, that we have a dependence on, or even, a fixation for, design, and we act as if the possession or ownership of things should change our existence. But to place our hopes on happiness, welfare, or personal growth on the objects, is an effort in vain, because they are no more than instruments, artefacts without life, that we use as a means for other purposes. Forgetting this can lead us to emotional isolation. The ties with the objects cannot be in the objects themselves, in their materiality, or in the little world of our successes and medals, but these objects should be the vehicles for achieving objectivity and for transmitting the values with which we have committed ourselves to. They should be vehicles to provide significance to existence and they should allow us to live this with pleasure.

The text of Loos is rich in this sense. He shows a certain contempt for the object in itself: the table is horrible, the frame of the photographs is ugly and the armchair is out of fashion. What really matters are the memories that he establishes, the links that give sense to the reality and that help us to recognize it. Our table is the one in which we explained stories and talked about our problems, and the ink stain that the sister evokes isn’t an ‘I’, but a ‘we’; objects for interacting, for relating with each other. These are the authentic values of the things that can be found beyond those of our private needs and which project us towards a greater ambit, one which is more open and that helps us in terms of the integration and adaptation as social beings.

1.1.1. The property and responsibility

«As it’s mine I can do whatever I want with it» You can hear this said from time to time, but the things are changing. Property is, according to a current point of view, a responsibility. The owners of some plots of land, of a physical property itself, of a company, etc., take on many more responsibilities than the rights themselves, given that they have to be accountable to third parties with regard to the way they administer or make use of the property. Far from being perceived as a field of freedom, the property is something which is more and more a factor of limitation; possessing something, nowadays, means reducing the alternatives while at the same time, establishing obligations. It doesn’t matter what type of property or possession we are talking about, in fact even the smallest one can be limiting.

With the global communications and the social networks we have once again found the old paradigms: those of collaborating, cooperating and sharing. We can find more and more applications for the mobile telephone that get the most out of the connectivity. It’s a question of travelling light, to take as little luggage with us as possible, and in the same way as the travellers who have hardly any luggage, we should depend more on the setting or surroundings and also on the hospitality of the inhabitants. As such, the non-ownership will increase the dependence of the people on the society in which they live and quite possibly without the limits of physical frontiers. This becomes a new opportunity to make the relations more human, and to bring to an end the idea of the self-sufficient hero from the culture of success.

But this doesn’t mean that by definition the quality of life of the people should go down, if not, quite the contrary; the possibilities of enjoying experiences, knowledge and commodities, have multiplied in such an exorbitant way, and these possibilities are getting increasingly closer and more available to a greater number of people. Furthermore, all these possibilities are accessible without the need to either possess them or to have them as their own properties. Jeremy Rifkin⁴ has widely explained what these possibilities are and also what the advantages are of having access to the services and has explained the fact that it would be much more serious what the discrimination to access would signify compared with the discrimination with regard to property.

the change taking place now is the fact that even to maintain a minimum level of freedom of action and to be able to enjoy the material goods this means having to have the minimum number of possessions.

The economist and ecologist Walter Stahel, among many others, states the need for renting goods or properties such as the car, the electrical appliances, the desktop computer, the lawnmower, or even a lift, so as to create a closed circuit of materials and components that are reusable. The imperious need to totally eliminate waste, and not only to reduce it, and to create a sustainable society, will oblige us to make sure it is the manufacturing company that is the owner of the complex goods and that it is the one responsible for the non-recyclable parts, and as such this will require a design which is intelligent, or smart, and this means providing profitability both for the investments in energy and in terms of the productions carried out.

It is the responsibility of the owning company to pick up the product at the end of its useful life and to turn it into a new product, or products, so as to satisfy the needs of the customers or clients. As such, we will be users and not consumers. We will enjoy all of the cultural, professional and leisure options provided by these products, but without being tied to a particular product that limits the alternatives and the possibility of change.

The design should provide a response to the different relation with the object, one which is less fetishistic, being less of a status symbol, and much more enriching both in terms of its use and significance. That is to say, we need to have an object which is liberating and not dominating, which increases the alternatives of use, and doesn’t condition our freedom of action. As the alternative author from the nineteenth century, Henry D. Thoreau⁵ would say: we need to avoid being a tool of our tools.

1.1.2. Beyond design

Design is entering into a new era in which the sustainability will be a basic concept, while at the same time being a reason for economic growth. This means that the design should tackle some different problems that, otherwise, have always been present in terms of the theoretical aspect but that the daily praxis has limited and even violated. The design must go beyond the field of influence of the object. You need to be able to see all the implications of the design, from the point of view of the customers and clients and their needs, right up until the end of the life of the product with the recuperation of its parts, taking into account logically the production process, that includes the extraction of the raw materials, the fact that it is energetically economic, non-polluting, and healthy for the operators; this should include the selection of the materials, ensuring that they are non-toxic and not mutagenic; ensuring that the distribution and packaging is recoverable and biodegradable, etc.; and that the use is simple and not aggressive for anyone, etc. However, the design, due to the fact that it has a broad methodology and a wide technological vision, should also be capable of advancing in nearly all the fields of human activity. The architect and designer Marcel Breuer said that he saw himself as being able to design anything from a spoon to a city; the architect McDonough has designed molecules and has renewed cities. Design, especially when it is interdisciplinary, is both integrating and global.

However, if this integrating and global vision has been desirable until now, it will soon become something totally obligatory. The growing complexity of the society, the cultural interconnections and the commercial contacts at a global level with the increase in the regulations, of all types and colours, will make it necessary for design to take on the work of being integrated in carrying out specific actions and at the same time as facilitating and ensuring the fulfilment of the responsibility that the companies and enterprises have to assume in this new revolution.

The need to reduce, recycle and recover is not just an environmental one. A redefinition of the concept of waste has allowed us to identify extensive areas inefficacy. Taiichi Ohno was the father of the production system of Toyota and one of the brains that revolutionised production in the second half of the twentieth century and who defined waste –muda in Japanese– as «any human activity that absorbs resources but doesn’t generate value». Muda is not only leftover material or the rejected parts; the concept also includes the errors that require rectifications, the products that don’t make it onto the market, excessive productions, stocks produced ahead of time, unnecessary production processes, movements of workers and materials within the company, transfers of staff and half-finished products, employees waiting, parts of products that are suffering from stoppage on the production line, but also under-used products or abandoned in the households, designs that cause damage or injuries or cause us to waste time with complicated functions, etc. Muda also refers to the delays that take place in the administration, the queues of foreigners to get their papers, the unemployed –so painful, as well as labour accidents, the poverty, etc. By eliminating the muda that surrounds us, this helps to simplify life; but it’s not easy, and in the process of eliminating it, there are many traps that cover up the savings, which are no more than pirouettes of inefficiency.

Many companies have made a major effort to eliminate the muda in their activities, both in terms of the production and regarding the administrative procedures, which have led to spectacular economic results. Managing in this way both the major and the small-scale resources of production have enabled the production to be increased with the same number of staff and the same capital, while there has been a reduction in the stocks, delays, defects, errors, accidents, etc.⁶ And managing to achieve this has meant competing with oneself, introducing a high level of demand and fighting for perfection and excellence; this has required constant research about waste, about inefficiency, and the need to tinker with things so as to eliminate the muda. Being cleaner has an economic and social value.

So as to make a society more sustainable we have to tackle the elimination of waste in this wide concept of muda, and that means simplifying, reducing and eliminating. In terms of design, this signifies only doing that which is needed, eliminating everything that is superfluous, making things easy to use, simple, accessible and providing value, by using less and less.

1.1.3. The product

In 1772 the small orchestra of the Prince Nicholas Esterhazy of Hungary, played a new composition by Franz J. Haydn that he himself conducted. As the performance progressed, so the musicians started leaving one by one, putting away the music from the music stand, and leaving their instrument carefully leaning on the stand until Haydn himself was left all alone, and finished playing the piece himself. The musicians had been accompanying the Prince in his summer residence for many days, away from their wives and families, and they were very tired, so they asked Haydn to intervene and for him to ask the Prince so that they could return to their homes. The composition, the Farewell Symphony, was the way to diplomatically asked for them to be allowed to go back to their families; and the Prince understood it in this way, and as such he gave them permission to go. Prior to the electronic era, those who wanted music had either to produce it for themselves or to ask someone else to play for them, but since the appearance of the radio and afterwards of the different methods of sound reproduction, we have been able to have the music we want, whenever we want, and for as much time as we want, without having to be accompanied by a full orchestra or having the personal problems that the Prince Esterhazy suffered from.

Not so long ago, automatic telephone answer machines were devices with a little cassette that recorded the message left on the phone, but since the telephone companies themselves provided the service, the answer phone, as an object, has disappeared. We now have a major offer objects, but at the same time the objects tend to disappear: they become smaller, lighter, more integrated, more multi-functional, etc., but when the object no longer does what we require, this is when we need to turn it into a service.

It’s not the form or the shape, it’s not the material, and it’s not the machinery that matters to the user, but what really matters is the fact of satisfying a need, of resolving a problem, and this can be achieved by means of an object, a service, an activity, a place or venue, an organisation, an ideology, etc. There’s no reason why we should restrict ourselves to just one alternative, the designer should ask him or herself which of these forms is the most natural one for each person, in what way they will be able to get the most out of it, and what advantages and benefits it could provide for each of them. We need to go beyond the object and in this way eliminate intermediaries and substitute objects.

The object itself isn’t used, what we use is the service it provides. Esterhazy didn’t want an orchestra, he wanted to listen to music, just as we want to do also. Public transport is a service that substitutes the private car or vehicle. The design has to be thought first in terms of the service, to satisfy both needs and experiences, it should be thought up so as to provide access to a utility more than the fact of creating a new object, and based on this we will know how the product should be.

We understand the product as all of the combinations of the attributes that accompany a good or service and make it affordable and easy to satisfy a particular need. The object occupies a place in the space, the product occupies a space in the mind. There is a psychological perception of the object that is based on the function, of what we want to do with it and with the problems that it may have. They are a combination of hopes, dreams, expectations, interests, advantages, benefits, and facilities that encourage and inspire users who see how a project could be feasible, or how a problem could be resolved. Acquiring or purchasing a product means living the experience of using it, of enjoying the excitement of getting the most out of it; more or less intensively, in a more or less evident way, but justifying the fact of possessing or having it, and enjoying it.

The object is what the designer designs; the product is what the people buy.

We are users with thousands and thousands of options within our reach and the object itself has to compete with intangible services. As Kotler made us see⁷, the same need, such as, for example, the fact of getting over a moment of depression, can be tackled by watching the TV, going on a holiday trip, by taking pills, by practising yoga, by going to a psychologist, or by becoming a member of an NGO, etc. The object becomes dematerialised because it has to compete with other objects, with services, people, activities, places, organisations or ideas, so that, as the first lessons in marketing explain, at the end of the day, it’s not a drill that you want, but a hole in the wall, and it’s not lipstick that you want, what you really want is seduction or self-esteem. Therefore, when the company and the designers make radical questions, the object becomes the product and it becomes dematerialised, it’s no more than the packaging of a service, of something to be satisfied.

1.2. Of simplicity

This book speaks about simplicity, and despite the fact that we all have in our mind a clear concept of what we understand by simple, and even complain of the lack or excess of simplicity, it’s not easy to determine what it is.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, at the outset of product design, people have always talked about, and insisted on, simplicity in the forms or shapes as one of the demands in terms of the quality of the product. Compared with craftwork, in which complexity and the number of hours dedicated were perceived to be an added value, mechanization and the production-line required industrial design, above all, to provide simplicity with the aim of achieving massive production at a good price. But it wasn’t only a problem of production: the crisis of style caused by the Great Exhibition of London in 1851 in which the poor aesthetic quality of the British industrial products was highlighted⁸, led to the appearance of new stylistic and ethical criteria. The copies of old styles, heavy forms, motley coloured finishing or lacks in artistic value led to a formal simplicity coinciding with the means of production and rapidly changing lifestyles. The major groups of workers from the country would start to make up an emerging middle class and in this way more humble artisan values, low cost and simplicity in the forms, would end up forming part of modernity. Promoted by artists and design schools, industry understood that to give their products prestige it was necessary to imitate the original aristocratic reputable craftwork, but it was enough to offer novelty, quality and simplicity of the mass-produced product.

Nevertheless, in any text which talks about the evolution of new products, reference is made to the growing complexity of all of them. Effectively the car, housing, telephone, furniture, etc. nearly all the objects that we are surrounded by, are more complex, more sophisticated and more elaborate than they were a few years ago, and the trend still continues in this way. Curiously we cannot say that there has been a change in orientation, but that we have two parallel, interrelated and simultaneous movements: in effect, in our environment more factors increasingly intervene and there are more and more actors with greater demands and more conditions. This increase in the complexity would provoke a social collapse if it wasn’t for an associated process of simplification that makes the reality in which the designers and users are immersed more comprehensible.

Larry Tesler, a former Apple engineer, came up with the Law of Conservation of Complexity⁹. He postulated that every software application must have an inherent amount of irreducible complexity. The time an engineer saves to reduce the complexity of use is spent and multiplied by millions of users. And the reverse, all time the engineer spend trying to reduce the complexity of use is saved by millions of users. Tesler argues that, in most cases, an engineer should spend an extra week reducing the complexity of an application versus making millions of users spend an extra minute using the program because of complex design interaction.

The eagerness for simplicity, which is complementary to complexity, always accompanies us despite the fact of being art and part of this growing complexity, either in the artificial world, that is to say, of the devices, or in that of the natural world, of which we are an inseparable part. We search for, and miss, simplicity because both our capacity for understanding and our capacity for realization are limited; there are some maximums that a person alone can achieve by him or herself. It’s true there are people with capacities who are admirable and notably above average, but the best things we do, aware as we are of our limits, are based not on individuality but on teamwork. However, while we try to live the simplicity, we extend the complexity. Because much of the complexity that we develop in the artefacts is oriented towards overcoming these limitations. Redressing things towards simplicity demands an effort and an active attitude. We can fix¹⁰ the threshold of complexity with regard to the capacity of humans, so something is simple when it can be made by just one person or when it can be understood by just one person; going beyond the first threshold means assuming the division of the work, going from the second means assuming the specialization of the knowledge. Simplicity would be at this human level. When a person on his or her own can cut, split, weave, trim and sew to make a dress, we are talking about simplicity; when someone else has to know something about the extraction and refining of petroleum or the extrusion of synthetic fibres, and then we’ve entered the world of complexity.

At these levels of simplicity, people feel comfortable, are able to understand their surroundings, and in some of them, can also control them. To a certain extent they are simple, with few demands, easily understandable and easily understood, accessible with basic training. Simple things are those done with few resources and means, but of course at the same time don’t have the possibilities or features of other more sophisticated ones, but they are perhaps sufficient; we can have cars with the necessary power for making small trips and with few accessories, or computers without multimedia capacities, only to be used for writing or doing your accounts, or towns of a human level. We need to take into account, however, that getting away from plainness is not a just a whim or a gratuitous action, the fragility of the human beings and their dependence on natural elements makes it only possible in a friendly environment, with a warm climate and abundant natural resources, for it to be really possible to live a simple life without ending up in misery. The anxieties for improving the quality of life, demographical increase, innate curiosity, and why not, ambition, leads to demand and to complicate the things more.

Plainness can be the optimum level in many cases, but we are even further from it. Simplicity doesn’t presuppose naturalness or plainness, simplicity fights to achieve clarity and comfort and to do so the ways are not always evident.

Complexity depends on three variables: the number of elements, the variety and the interdependence between them. When an organism or system is made up of few elements it is easy to understand and control it. Variety and diversity increase the level of complexity, while repetition and redundancy reduce