Beauty vs. Elegance in Business
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
– Einstein
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Perfection is achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Restraint and grace of style.
– def. Elegance
Seemingly effortless beauty or charm of movement, form, or proportion.
– def. Grace
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beauty and folly are old companions.
– Benjamin Franklin
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
– Leo Tolstoy
Apple’s products may have been beautiful, but they were first elegant.
There’s a challenge that businesspeople face that requires restraint. Like the lines and shapes and colors in Kandinsky’s paintings, or the complex emotional layers and range of Mahler’s symphonies, it’s easy to add a multitude of features to our products or services. Kandinsky and Mahler produced beautiful works of art that will continue to live on for centuries, but they are not elegant and they require a great deal of time and energy to digest.
Editor’s note: I’m particularly fond of both Kandinsky and Mahler.
Common (complex) beauty in art works because the appreciation lies in taking the time to unravel its complexities.
Complex beauty in business does not work for the same reason. Consumers (b2c) and businesses (b2b) don’t have the time to sit there and unravel the nature and beauty of your product. Beauty is short-sighted…it’s attractive, but does not sustain.
Compare an elegant black dress with simple lines to what a 20-something might wear one Friday night out. They both might be beautiful, but imagine which might better facilitate a long-term relationship vs. a one-night stand.
Study Modrian’s use of color and shape, Vivaldi’s Largo movement of Winter in his Four Seasons, the first cd of John Digweed’s Global Underground 019 in Los Angeles, the timeless architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright…notice how the design is pleasing, but not the point…the experience from within his architecture is the point. Nothing more needs to be added to any of those works and yet nothing can or should be taken away.
Italian cathedrals, Gaudi’s architecture, Las Vegas…they all grab your attention and are beautiful in their own ways. But the beauty overtakes function.
Elegance, on the other hand, displaces beauty to facilitate function.