My wife and I recently picked up a book by Patrick McDonnell (of Mutts fame) for our kids. Something struck me about his work that I had failed to see in the past, the lack of detail in his work.
With tiny gestures and very few lines he is able to sculpt enough of his characters that you can fill in the rest with your mind. With it comes these feelings of purity, imagination and spontaneity. Its almost as if he isn’t even trying, the lines just flow from his pen.
I started to wonder about how this lesson could be applied to interface design. I found over the last few months that I have a preference towards interfaces that are more subtle and light. When I download an iPhone app I’m looking for something that uses very little to get the job done, the same could be said for any task I have to complete on the web. When we begin to design an interface are we looking for the least amount of lines and elements to tell the story or do we try to add more to say less? I fear that too many times I’ve leaned on the latter.
