The power of simplicity

There is a maxim that I have always followed in my work since I read and learned from Mies Van Der Rohe's “less is more” and Saatchi & Saatchi's “brutal simplicity of thought”. 

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By Fabricio Mancebo, Iconic Brand Architect & Creative Hacker Turning Bold Ideas into Love Marks

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And although they talked about architecture and creative thinking applied to advertising respectively, it is applicable to all areas of life and our profession and, of course, to the creation of brands and logos.

To feel, not to read: When logos transcend language

There are logos that do not need to be read, they are felt, they express themselves, they conquer your retina. What they do is not “decorate” a brand but contain it and turn it into pure meaning. In its purest form, a good logo not only represents, but reveals and expresses itself. That is why simplifying does not mean taking away, it means letting the soul of a brand be seen, what remains when you eliminate everything superfluous and keep the essence.

Graphic asceticism: The discipline of essential design

Simplicity, in our world of branding, is for me a form of radical honesty, that which is born from the exercise of stripping away the excessive so that the fundamental and the basic can emerge. We could be talking about graphic asceticism, as if when designing a logo, we enter a state where every curve, every absence, every visual silence makes sense. Because in the creation of visual identity, as in Tadao Ando's architecture or Jil Sander's fashion, for example, what is not there also speaks and means something.

A logo is a structure loaded with soul. Like a Romanesque church, austere, but with that light that falls exactly where it should be. Good design is not made to entertain, but to move and transmit, and it is made from the control of the

elements, from the analysis of the information, from the mental image that we make full of content, which must be simplified and made real. A well-chosen typography stroke can say more about a brand than any slogan. A subtle graphic gesture can contain an entire story, as Borges did in each of his sentences. 

Simplicity is a technique, but it is also an ethic, a stance against excess, against noise, against the ego of designing too much.

When I created GOZO, a brand dedicated exclusively to baked cheesecakes, the challenge was not just to make it palatable, but true. We wanted the brand to

speak to the excitement of the melting texture, the first cut, the almost childlike memory awakens. The logo had to be like the cake, creamy, honest, round. And in the end, what worked best was to reduce it to the simplest: a slightly wavy typography, as if it were about to melt, but solid and powerful, like its flavor. Just the right gesture on the Z, nothing more. Balance and simplicity combined with a striking color that symbolizes the extreme shade of cheese, which we have seen in cartoons since we were children and which has marked our memories: yellow.

The power is in the pause

That is the paradox of simplicity: it is not poor, it is exact, it is not cold, it is accurate. Often, when designing a brand, I feel closer to a sculptor than to a graphic designer. Like Michelangelo when he said that his task was to free the

form trapped in the marble, the brand designer looks for the identity that already exists in the soul of the project, but which does not yet have a body and needs to be sculpted.

Sometimes clients want “something more powerful”, “something more visual”, and you have to have the courage - and the vision - to remind them that the power is in the pause. That what is memorable is not what is seen quickly, but what is remembered slowly. The brands that have lasted the longest are not those that shout, but those that breathe and make history through coherent communication. And in a world saturated with stimuli, from my point of view, breathing is already a revolutionary act.

The Tramonti logo that we have just designed for the Italian-Mediterranean restaurant located in El Portú, the Formentera of the Costa Cálida, is created and based on a contemporary place of worship. The logo, with its classic typographic cadence, sober, solar and balanced, evokes the sunset, the union of two worlds, of two twin coasts, the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Costa Calida, it is the union of Trattoria and Tramonti as two soul mates, it is like an engraving in stone, made for eternity. Identity must endure over time and that is the real impact.

A Breath in a World That Screams

In these times where design tends to hyper speed and branding to anxiety, going back to the simple is an act of resistance. And I'm not talking about Pinterest minimalism, but deep essentialism. Like a well-written haiku, a simple logo is not explained, it is felt and harmonized. And it is appreciated by those who have left behind the need to embellish everything just for the sake of it.

Simplicity is not only aesthetic, but also the consequence. It is the result of having asked all the uncomfortable questions: Who are you? What do you want to say?

What are you willing not to say? What do you represent? What is your essence, your purpose and your values? In practice this means making decisions. Many of them. And renouncing, renouncing the temptation of the gimmick, the trap of the occurrence and the fear of emptiness.

Because in the emptiness, if one has worked well, what matters appears, because simplicity prevails.

And that, perhaps, is the true definition of a good logo: a form that remains when everything else changes. A visual truth that needs no explanation.