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As a web designer and information architect it’s my job to make things simple. So simplicity, of course, is one of the attributes our firm strives for in all our work, as well. Our content specialists work on web copy to make it easier to read and understand. Our web marketing expertise focuses on boiling content down to its essence, for both its audience and for search engines. Our designers take complex technical product information such as flow charts and schematics and create visualizations and diagrams that tell a clear story. Or they create an icon or a logo that needs to communicate the most critical information about a product or brand in a half-inch square space.

Lately, for no reason I can tell, I’ve been seeing quotations about simplicity in books and on web sites. I continued browsing and searching to find a few more. I’m struck by the fact that the giant, iconic minds of art, science and philosophy all revere simplicity as a core principle. da Vinci, Thoreau, Einstein, and many others. So I thought I’d make a blog post out of them … they’re all very useful and all remarkably similar in their sentiment.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Simplicity is the glory of expression” – Walt Whitman

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein

“Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein

“A vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout your life” — Winston Churchill

“In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” – Fredric Chopin

» This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Design, Information Architecture, User Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.