We are back! This is our fourth season and this year, we have some changes: More on design, guests via WhatsApp and a year-long experiment to create a Studio Snack jingle.
In this episode, we delve into the history of new year’s resolutions, we chat about the challenges of minimalism, experiment with simplification, we ask an architect – and we introduce our visual sound experiment.
New year’s resolutions
New year’s resolutions go back to ancient Babylon, though their new year was in March, tied to the start of the growing season. It was the Romans who shifted it to January 1, as a tradition of starting the year in the right way (recorded by the poet Ovid). Medieval knights are said to have renewed their vows at the end of the year – by placing their hands on a live or roasted peacock…
But breaking resolutions has history too – we’ve round quotes from old magazines mocking worthy resolutions and advising readers against making promises they can’t keep.
Less is more in design
“Less is more” is attributed to the architect Mies Van der Rohe, the last director of the Bauhaus. From Coco Chanel: “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.” And designer Bruno Munari said, “To complicate is easy. To simplify is difficult.”
We chat about how these are useful in our own practice and how the simpler design is, the more important the detailing. We discuss classic logos like V&A, BBC, and Channel 4, all still recognisable after decades with only subtle changes. And we have a WhatsApp chat with architect Teoman Ayas, who tells us how his practice MIMStudios brings warmth to minimalism.
Simplifying to destruction
We set ourselves an experiment: pick a winter snack, draw it, and see how much we could simplify.
Lydia has sketched dried fruit and nuts on iPad, saving versions at each stage. Two things have surprised us:
- Because Lydia does a lot of live sketching, she didn’t start with shapes – she drew speedily, as if the snacks were going to move, even though they weren’t going anywhere!
- When she ran AI alt-tag generators on the sketches, most identified the nuts at mid stage rather than with the most detail. But none recognised the raisins.
Narcis has tried the same with a bag of crisps. Reducing it to a rectangle, with the logo it was recognisable as a crisp bag. But without the logo, until Narcis added crinkles or seals, no one could understand what it was.
What has this told us? Well, it’s reminded us of the knowledge and skills involved in taking detail away. We both remember doing exercises at college on simplifying images or logos.
See our Studio Snack Soundbites blogpost, coming soon, for the story so far on our sound experiment.