Blog

Book Presentation: Elegant Design

Posted on by

A designer’s guide to harnessing Aesthetics by Luca Iandoli and Giuseppe Zollo

the image displays the book cover and an editorial praise by prof, Chaparro, Parsons School of Design, The New School

Join us online for a conversation on our new book “Elegant Design” organized by The Institute for International Communication and the St. John’s University Design Factory

Authors: Dr. Luca Iandoli, Collins College of Professional Studies, St. John’s University and Giuseppe Zollo, University of Naples Federico II (Italy), Moderator: Prof. Aaris Sherin, MFA, St. John’s College of Arts and Sciences

Visual information is everywhere. We are constantly immersed in a flow of visual data that reshapes our social and inner world. Companies and individuals are competing to conquer the public’s scarce attention by inventing distinctive visual formats to stand out from the crowd. How can designers, inventors, and product managers create designs that are quick to process as well as meaningful, unique and memorable in an age characterized by constant information overload?

The answer is to think aesthetically. Research insights at the intersection between cognitive science and art studies demonstrate that our minds can effectively process visual complexity by using aesthetic pleasure and judgement as a guide. Analysing the work of great artists and designers from the perspective of how our mind appreciates beauty, Elegant Design identifies actionable aesthetic strategies that will help you to design products and user experiences that are useful, beautiful and meaningful.

Join us on Zoom on April 22, 1200 EST at this link: https://bit.ly/3tfusLh, Meeting ID 236 029 0430, Pass w: 9qWOrL 

Discount code GLR 9XUUS applicable for webinar participants for purchases from: https://bit.ly/3tfNXDw

Measuring Elegance as Effective Complexity

Posted on by

In this paper titled “Simple as it can be, but not simpler: Perceived elegance as effective complexity in Interface Design” and that has received a best paper award at the 2020 AMCIS conference, we propose and test a method to measure the elegance of an interface (the paper and the presentation are both accessible at this link).

A balance designed by Dieter Rams for Braun: this design is elegant because its unusual and intriguing shape does make the act of weighing something more exciting but also surprisingly simple (image in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons, By w/d/h, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9409146.

Continue reading “Measuring Elegance as Effective Complexity”

Our publications and presentations

Posted on by

Iandoli, L., Piantedosi, L., Salado, A., & Zollo, G. (2018). Elegance as complexity reduction in systems design. Complexity, 2018.

Salado, A., Iandoli, L., & Zollo, G. (2016, July). Painting systems: from art to systems architecting. In INCOSE International Symposium (Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 773-787).

painting systemsDownload

Iandoli, L., Zollo, G. (2019), Complessità del mondo e necessità dell’arte, In: Capucci, P.L and Simoni, S., Arte e complessità, Noemi edizioni

iandoli-zollo-complessita-del-mondo-e-necessita-dellarteDownload

Iandoli, L., Zollo, G. (2018), The Age of Aesthetics, presentation at Aalto University Venture program

age-of-aestheticsDownload

Iandoli, L., Zollo, G. (2018), Think as an artist: Creativity for the Design of effective products and service, ICSB Certificates, https://icsbglobal.org/c-i-certificate/

think-as-an-artistDownload

The poetry of coffeemaking: the importance of Fluency in Design

Posted on by

And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would have liked to have known you 
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did

(Elton John, Candle in the wind – on the right a 1961 portrait of Marylin Monroe by Henry Cartier Bresson)

You may have recognized from these few verses the famous song that Elton John dedicated to Marylin Monroe’s memory. Assuming you know the song, let’s do an experiment.

Continue reading “The poetry of coffeemaking: the importance of Fluency in Design”

Battlefield Aesthetics

Posted on by

What is striking about Napoleon’s strategic genius is his ability to visualize troops in battle not as separate entities, but as connected nodes in a network of tensions. Tensions that push, pull, support, threaten, and protect elements connected in a network of relationships. Likewise, the quality and effectiveness of a design depends on the designer’s ability to identify this invisible network of tensions and pull the right strings to achieve the desired ending.

Napoleon crossing the Alps, Jacques-Louis David (1801)
kb.dk pic, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1478444

Continue reading “Battlefield Aesthetics”

The Elegance of mathematics: a lesson by Dante Alighieri

Posted on by

The relationship between the expressive richness of natural language and the rigor of mathematics has been explored by poets and writers over the centuries with surprising results. Mathematics has been used by artists to define strict Boundaries within which to express their creativity as well as to build bold metaphors. Among the many, we remember Borges, who in numerous works is seduced by the vertigo of mathematical thought. An example is the Aleph point of infinite dimensions: “An Aleph is one of the points of space that contain all the points […] the place where they are found without confusion, all the places of the earth, seen from all angles”.

Domenico di Michelino – Dante and the three worlds, 1465

Continue reading “The Elegance of mathematics: a lesson by Dante Alighieri”

Think as an Artist: the Art of Empathy in new product Design

Posted on by

This two-day workshop organised with the support of Alan Advantage is dedicated to managers, entrepreneurs, designers, and visual communication professionals who want to develop an empathic approach to the development of new products and content. Empathy is introduced through the analysis of how users deal with complexity. We use Art and Design masterpieces to illustrate how aesthetic reasoning helps to handle complexity. Finally we provide participants with methods on how to achieve good complexity through labs and site visits in which we apply lessons from painting, photography, and storytelling to interface design.

click here for the program

Defining elegance

Posted on by

The attribute elegant is often associated with original as well as parsimonious information representation as in “elegant theory”. In all these cases, elegance pertains to a theory’s ability to explain more with less rules and assumptions. For Instance, the Copernican theory that puts the sun at the center of the solar system is more elegant than the Ptolemaic one in which the Earth is at the center.

Mars, Earth, and Sun orbits as represented in the Copernican VS Ptolemaic systems – orbits drawn as circles and Martian year rounded to 2 times Earth’s year to create a smooth animation (By user: cleonis,wikipedia) –

Continue reading “Defining elegance”

Lost in translation: the discovery of the Amazon River

Posted on by

by Giuseppe Zollo

An literal journey into complexity began on December 26, 1541. On that day Francisco de Orellana left Gonzalo Pizarro’s expedition stuck in the Peruvian forest and with sixty men descended the Coca River in search of food. He won’t ever come back. Following the course of Coca and Napo rivers, Orellana reached an immense expanse of water. It was the Amazon River, which the expedition will follow for eight months up to the river’s mouth on improvised boats.

Continue reading “Lost in translation: the discovery of the Amazon River”