Design is perfect when nothing more can be taken away

This is a story of designing a phrase. Many people have participated in this project:

The best products are made of simplicity. Simplicity makes things easy to learn, easy to use, effective as tools, reliable and enjoyable. I’ve been looking for proverbs that communicate this wisdom. How short can you go – without losing something essential?

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944)

My favourite slogan originates from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944), an engineer who is best known for writing the The Little Prince. The wisdom assigned to him is often quoted like this in English:

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” (e.g. at www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/antoinedes121910.html#Zfp093e5CQXgeXUq.99)

However, Antoine’s slogan was earlier quoted differently:

“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away” (e.g. at www.inspireux.com/2008/07/14/a-designer-achieves-perfection-when-there-is-nothing-left-to-take-away/)

or like this – one of the widely spread versions:

“Perfection in design is not achieved when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.”

But, of course, Antoine wrote none of the above. He wrote in French, and in the book Terre des Hommes (1939), he phrased it

“Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n’y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n’y a plus rien à retrancher.” (in Chapter III: L’Avion, p. 60)

In the English translation to Wind, Sand and Stars (1939) by Lewis Galantière, the phrase got the original English form:

“It seems that perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.”

What happened? The translator added a new meaning, the “finally”, perhaps after having spent long working hours by trying to make this translation perfect.

In 1990, my girlfriend gave me The Little Prince as a birthday present. The book is still in my bookshelf, between Moby Dick and Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales which she bought to me later, having become my wife.

At that time was moving from Product Marketing to Marketing Comms of Nokia. Saint-Exupéry’s famous quote I had still not seen. My life was about adding things. I upgraded my MacPlus’ RAM from 2MB to 2.5MB. I added to the Internet by writing my first HTML page. Nokia added the world’s first mobile game into a phone – which many critics laughed at.

Adding more books to the book shelf, I read Saint-Exupéry beyond the Little Prince. Some day I finally added myself to the line of people who have read the “Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.”

I tasted the phrase, I applied it, I liked it.

I moved from communications to R&D, and I wanted to share the idea. And whenever I said it aloud, the phrase felt unconveniently long. People couldn’t remember it. Until I finally understood what Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was advising me to do. Applying the sentence to itself, it shortened to

Design is perfect when
there is nothing more to take away.

I could not find any more word to take away. I have used the phrase in this shorter form since 1994.

The sentence has served me well for two decades now. Tried I have to shorten it. On 7.7.2015, I condidered publishing this one:

Design is perfect when
there is nothing to take away.

Why? Or, more precisely, why no more? These were my arguments:

The “more” sets a prerequisite. You first take away something, then something more.
What if the design happens to be perfectly simple, or simply perfect, from the very beginning? The first encountering of a designer and a user need can turn into a brialliantly simple solution. Then the sentence with “more” sounds illogical.
On the other hand, taking away the “more” does not weaken the logic in the typical case of repetitive take-aways. The sentence sets the acceptance criteria, whether you work in an if-then or loop-until mindset.
Shortly: Without the “more“, the guideline enables you to accept the outcome already at the first sight, assuming it is perfect.

I actively used the phrase without “more” for some months, only to find that I had gone too far. The “more” was essential. It communicated the idea of a process – which is what the design is about. Without “more”, I could also cynically read between the lines: “Yeah, great design, but it does not provide any take-aways.”

For those to quote:

Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n’y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n’y a plus rien à retrancher. (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1939)
It seems that perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away. (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s text, 1939, translated by Lewis Galantière, 1939)
Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. (some anonymous person who claimed this to have been written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
Perfection in design is not achieved when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove. (some anonymous person, assumingly a Designer who read the previous one)
Design is perfect when there is nothing more to take away. (Jussi Kapanen, 1994)
Design is perfect when there is nothing than can be taken away. (Jussi Kapanen, 2015)

Whichever format you like, feel free to apply! I have noticed that not just designers but also project managers love the principle 🙂

There were two anonymous ones in the list above. If anyone knows these persons, please let me know.

The first anonymous writer wrote the “Perfection is achieved not when…”

This writer understood the original idea, and applied the rule to itself by leaving out the less important parts “It seems that”, “finally” and “no longer”.
Also some translations changed: attained → achieved, no … anything → nothing.
The original idea was kept, the outcome was just easier to read.

Simultaneously, something dramatic happened:

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s original phrase presented an observation: “It seems that…”
Now the renewed version wasa claim: “Perfection is…”

The second anonymous quoter is not totally unknown: he left traces of himself in the words.

Firstly, he was presumably a designer.
He was sure enough of the competence area to make this claim.
This designer made an addition “…in design…”
Logically, we can question the contribution of this designer:
Based on the statement itself, a thing is not improved by adding more.

And naturally we have all those more complicated versions, like “A designer knows that the perfection is achieved…” and so on. I save you from those, as they don’t really add value to the history. The major turns were now over. The originally generic statement had been boxed into the wireframe of design, and the original raw material (observation) had been sharpened into a tool (guideline).

From an engineer’s viewpoint, the phrases above work excellently. They define a clear method by which you can improve things and finally evaluate the readiness.

But could the phrase be better from some viewpoint? Who could improve the verbal design of an engineer? Well, perhaps a designer. And yes, they have. The most famous designer quote, I believe, is the

“Less is more”

Many “know” that this slogan originates from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Less know that it does not. And even less know what it might have originally meant. Check the What-did-mies-van-der-rohe-mean-by-less-is-more. van der Rohe learned the phrase “Less is more” from his mentor Peter Behrens with whom the young Mies worked at the AEG Turbine Factory in Berlin. Ludvig Mies van der Rohe himself told the story:

“I heard it in Behrens’s office for the first time. I had to make a drawing for a facade for a factory. There was nothing to do on this thing. The columns were 5.75 meters. I will remember that until I die. I showed him a bunch of drawings of what could be done and then he said, ‘Less is more’,” but “he meant it in another way than I use it.”

In which way did Behren mean it? I don’t know. If you know, please share it to the rest of us.

Marty Neumeier, another respected designer, tweeted on 1.5.2016:

“The value of a creative product
doesn’t lie in how much is there,
but in how much has been discarded.”

In this excellent phrase, the “value” can be interpreted as the added value provided by the design process. I believe all design teams working within larger organizations feel this problem. The surrounding teams are valued by their visible output. The design team delivers a minimalistic solution, without burdening others with the all the left-off features and interaction. So little they did? Nothing may be perfect design. If something is invisible, we often overlook it.

Or would the linguistics do it even better? Remember what your English teacher tought: “When in doubt, leave it out.” That is, the comma. Researchers have concluded that rhymes help us to memorize things. This phrase rhymes beautifully. Designers can value the symmetry of the sentence, engineers can praise its balance around the comma. Well done, teachers!

Whatever form you take, the rule itself – its meaning – seems to be universally accepted. The difficulty is to know how simple is simple enough – and what drops over the edge of losing every value. These painting would not be as valued as they are unless they were painted by famous enough artists:

“Black Square”, a black square painting by Kasimir Malevich in 1915, see www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/collection/_show/image/_id/378
“Blue Monochrome”, a blue square painting by Yves Klein in 1961, see www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80103
“Untitled”, a white square painting by Robert Ryman in 1961, read observer.com/2014/sothebys-bets-big-on-an-all-white-robert-ryman-estimates-20-million/

The same approach is visible also in fine restaurants where you are served with almost empty plates. You can’t be sure if you are just fooled to pay for nothing. This is not the type of design I am talking about. I’m talking about design that delivers value to users, not design that serves artistic egos.

“Black Square” and “Untitled” have gone to the extreme of simplicity, just one step away from nothingness. They are close to the big invention: Nothingness should be the goal much more often than simplicity. In a perfect product, the needed happens without any user interaction: Just walk and the door opens, or just place your hand under the water faucet to wash your hands.

The perfection seen in the nothingness is also a universal idea – although not many of us dare to follow it. Ask a Zen monk what he does in meditation. He will reply: “I do nothing. I sit empty and that’s all I do. ”

I conclude by enjoying the perfectness of nothing.uk. As by today, nobody has used that domain to anything.

(written 25.5.2016)

So, this has been my favourite so far:

Design is perfect when
there is nothing more to take away.

Somewhat problematically, I have along the years felt that not everybody reads the key idea between the lines: “…without decreasing the value.” You might happily cut off too much, just to speed up the product project to end sooner. One should not proceed beyond the optimum. However, adding the “without decreasing the value” would lengthen the phrase. That I won’t accept. So how about this: