The Three Basic Principles of Design as Told by an Artist

One day in class, the professor has finished scribbling three words onto the whiteboard at the bottom of his particular knowledge well – Efficiency, Reliability, Simplicity and the phrase “Explain 3 design constraints. Papers due next week”. The collected students nod sagely to one another. All except for the rather odd one way in the back with the unkempt hair and unruly clothes, a notebook full of scribbled and scratched notes, and more than a little bit of a wild look about her eyes - the only one there who isn’t an engineering student. Maybe she just wandered into the lecture hall by mistake, perhaps she simply enjoys hanging around with one of the engineers nearby, but it’s plain that she’s pretty far out of place. Not sure, herself, of just what she’s doing there. But that was a few moments ago before the professor had begun to write. Now, the gleam in her eyes has become a bit more wicked. This girl, gentle reader, has plans. Plans that unfold themselves the next week on her professor’s desk like a blueprint. Amid drawings and diagrams of Vitruvian complex simplicity flowing back and forth throughout the document like smoke billowing under glass, the professor, finger tracing back and forth circling between meaning and madness, manages to decypher the following:

1. Efficiency. Whatever it is you’re making should do what it’s supposed to do. And do it extremely well. Refined, practiced, and honed like a razor’s edge, your product should work. “Work smarter, not harder.”
2. Reliability. Whatever it is you’re doing should work not just once, not just the first time, but as many times as humanly possible. A work made for just one set of eyeballs doesn’t do much good. “Work every time.”
3. Simplicity. Whatever it is you’re doing shouldn’t have any wasted effort. It should be simple enough that a child can understand. If only the very basics of it. Further exploration and engagement with the work can reveal hidden facets and dimensions but if you can’t get that foot in the door no one’s going to bother to look. “Work well.”