rss feedBell-Bottomed Design
I am too young to remember the flashy bell-bottoms of the 70s, but I’ve heard all about them, and John Travolta’s embarrassing role in Saturday Night Fever still burns the inside of my skull.
The bell-bottoms probably looked great to people living in that era, in fact, people who didn’t express that unfortunate fashion-statement might have seemed “out of touch”. But alas, the bell-bottoms are dead and those who wore them wonder how they could have been so terribly wrong.
But they weren’t wrong; beauty is in the eye of the beholder and style is subjective. If everyone thinks a unique fad is “totally groovy” – it is, but don’t expect it so stay that way. That’s the thing about temporary style choices; they are temporary.
Simplicity, however, is eternal. Black is always fashionable because of its innate simplicity and lack of defining characteristics that might, one day, become unfashionable. When design is stripped-down to the bare minimum, when the gimmicks and trends are gone, that which remains is timeless. The answer to the age-old question “What is good design?” is, apparently “Simple design”.
