A unique, practical guide to using aesthetics to achieve effective and beautiful designs, combining insights from art, design, information theory and psychology.

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.

"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