Vignelli: "Thats Just Trash"

As is evident in my title, my favorite portion of the speech was when an audience member challenged Mr. Vignelli's opinion that a lot of commercial design was "garbage" or "trash". This created an akward exchange during which Vignelli asserted that his opinion was correct while the audience member spit out his title as VP of some organization or other in an effort to gain credibility. The exchange ended with Vignelli dismissing the the audience member's opinion and moving on (although he briefly brought it up again).

While I was amused by the awkward quasi-argument it really pointed to a larger theme in Vignelli's speech. It is easy to over think design when working to boost sales or hype a product. While clients often want an explicit message to be apparent in design (i.e. buy my shit) an overstated design does not work. As Vignelli stated, "the layout should be invisible". A good commercial design will sell the target product without letting the audience totally understand what is so appealing about it. Vignelli has been wowing the design world for decades, not because he is overtly complicated or because he works in high brow concepts, but because he understands this important concept:simplicity is beautiful.