Learning from the master(s)

Massimo Vignelli's recent lecture to a crowded auditorium of anxious design students and professors proved to be an hour and half of education on the simple. As one of the cleanest designers known, it was easy and enlightening to follow Vignelli's strong conviction that less is more. "The purpose of design is to carry a message," he explained. "If the carrier becomes more important than the message, something is wrong."

This ideal has obviously been the focus of both Vignelli's and his wife Lella's aesthetic from the beginning of their career. From light fixtures to flatware, from jewelry to tables, from subway system graphics to paper invites, this notion has been applied to everything the Vignellis have touched. And, it's definitely done its job of creating design that is timeless and invisibly--two attributes Vignelli says are a must.

Interestingly, when talking about the future, Vignelli said the Internet and new technology is where it's at. "The book is dead, and online is here." Therefore, he suggested this the place to be today and moving forward, and he gave some parameters for making clean, good design in this arena. "There are very few good typefaces. I only use four--Bodoni, Times New Roman, Helvetica and Garamond."

He continued by warning that it was the computer age that gave designers the ability to do the best typefaces in 500 years. However, it also permitted the ugliest and highest level of stupidity in 500 years.

Again, less is more, even when applied to the digital age. Web design deserves to be as timeless as a chair. And, as Vignelli explained: "Great design should be invisible. It should just exist."