Simplicity Isn’t Necessarily Simple
I posted a photo of my new kitchen sink on Facebook last week. That’s how much I love the easy functionality of this thing. It’s wide, it’s exceptionally deep and roomy, and, as I pointed out in my Facebook post, it’s simple. Well, maybe not so much.
I got an immediate comment from Sam, an old acquaintance, stating the following: “That sink is not really so simple. It’s an “under mount” sink onto granite with a weighted, one-touch removable spout and a single hot-to-cold brushed nickel handle.”
Sam’s response brings up an important point. As an end user, I may love the utilitarian simplicity of this sink, but, as is usually the case, what I experience as simple started out as a complex problem. A great example of this is the MacBook Pro I’m using to write this blog. Behind the effortless, intuitive user interface of this amazing machine are a thousand problems, every one of them unsolvable by most of us. The beauty of the computer lies in the fact that we, as consumers, never have to open that particular can of worms. We reap the benefits of gobs of painstaking research and technological breakthroughs that we never see or think about. All we really care about; all we experience is the effortless ease of working with this laptop.
Whether it’s highly distilled copy or clean-and-clear graphic design, at Cronin Creative we utilize that same process. Faced with a multi-pronged, complex message, our end goal is to boil that information down – with words and graphics – to its easily understood essence. The user is pulled in and walks away with a keen understanding of the subject at hand, a complex message made simple.
In the end, we need to embrace both complexity and simplicity, because we can’t have one without the other. The push and pull of these two seemingly opposite things create the tension that leads to disruption and real innovation. Simple, right?
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