Walk the minimalist line

This past week has proven to be quite diverse in the types of project I've been working on and their overall look. After analyzing my initial concepts, I began to notice a definitive line between the work being minimalist in nature, and being underdesigned. 

As I've eluded to many times over, I am more drawn to simplistic, clean minimalism than I am the art-heavy layouts and packaging. Not to say that I don't appreciate intricate, beautifully illustrated wine labels or the occasional rockstar-inspired t-shirt or album packaging. I just find much more beauty is the direct, thought-out transfer of information. I would choose sans-serif over serif, left-aligned over centered, etc, etc.

It's all-too-easy for a simplistic look to come across underdesigned and poorly thought through. I first became aware of this my senior year of college. The exhibition was entitled 'green', playing off of the diversity of the color, the conveyance of growth and freshness it represents. I was gearing up for my senior art show and presented my self-promo mailer invitation to my professor. I can't find the initial concept, but it looked pretty much like this:

In essence, she told me that this was underdesigned. I tried to explain that I was going for simple...clean; that I wanted there to be a crispness to the exhibition. I was not an artist, I was a designer. I work in clean edges and precise shapes.

She didn't give me any great direction, but she said that this was not 'simple and crisp' in a planned way. This simply looked tacky.

So, back to the drawing board I went and finally came up with something much better.

And, like I said before, not until very recently was I able to pinpoint what that threshold is. From my research, the difference between underdesigning and minimalism is based on 1 general principle and 3 specific aspects of the design (Type, Color, Secondary Intrigue).

First, the design (label, website, packaging, poster, card, anything) cannot rely on any one of the 3 aspects alone. If that occurs, you end up with a stale design. In my promo card above, my desire for simplicity completely disregarded all use of interesting typestyling or texture. Green is a great color, but without aid, it's only a color. Had it been paired with a more stylized typeface to act as a focal point, or if the type was bled off the edge, the card now has interest where it was otherwise words on paper. Although still not enough, even something as simple as this would be a step up.

Second, there needs to be some amount of intrigue that isn't the focal point of the design. This adds texture to the design. It doesn't necessarily have to be a pattern on the whole piece. In fact, generally it isn't. It can be an area of secondary information about the product, or the date time and location of the event. This chocolate bar packaging is a great example of that. They've used each of the 3 aspects together to create a simple label. The variation in type size and style (along with color!) is a bit of secondary intrigue. Without that, all you have is a logo on a brown wrapper.

Lastly, here's a case study of 2 different honey jars. Both of these are attempting the simple look, but only one uses all 3 of the design aspects from above. The jar on the right uses color (black) to create stark contrast against the golden honey. However, a lack of interest with any other design element causes this one to fall short. Other options would have been a small raised bee in the glass near the bottom of the jar. Or even a die cut label instead of just the circle.

The jar on the left creates secondary intrigue in a couple different ways: jar shape, and using the texture of the honeycomb in the jar. This allows the label to be a little more understated. However, the small logo and even distance between the type is laid out with purpose.