Elegant Design: A Designer's Guide to Harnessing Aesthetics

Description

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.

Luca Iandoli is Associate Dean for Global Programs and Research and a professor in the Department of Computer Science at St. John's University. Luca was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence and served as associate professor at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, and as visiting professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, USA. His research focuses on collective intelligence, interaction design, and product aesthetics. Giuseppe Zollo is Professor of Business and Management at the University of Naples Federico II, Schools of Engineering and School of Architecture, Italy. With a background in architecture and information science, Giuseppe's research focuses on complex systems, organizational learning and sense-making. His intellectual interests span from cognitive studies on art appreciation to history of science and technology.

By exploring the tensions between simplicity and complexity, Luca Iandoli and Giuseppe Zollo, have masterfully developed a set of methods explaining the basic concepts of design through the analysis of art and psychological theories, leading to their application to produce innovative product design. * Yvette Chaparro, Parsons School of Design / The New School, USA *