Graphic and web design is big business at the moment. Web designers are required to help with website creation, with apps, with new tools and more. Graphic designers need to help here too, plus they are required to come up with product packaging, posters, flyers, adverts and much more besides.

But this doesn’t mean that designers are slacking off because they have plenty of work. Standards are constantly being raised and more demanded of them. With this in mind designers and business owners shouldn’t forget about the importance of simplicity.

Designers always talk about simplicity. Just listen to Jony Ive of Apple!

To achieve simplicity is actually extremely difficult to do. It’s easy to design something and avoid decision making by adding everything just to be safe. That way nothing gets left out. But what if you had to choose one thing and only one thing. That one thing that will get the whole message across without the need for all the other stuff. Not so easy now is it.

The key is in creating something that ‘just seems to work’. If you see something for the first time and instinctively know what to do with it, that’s simplicity.

Apple have demonstrated this ethos since their beginning. They don’t add features simply because they can. Features are added only if they are really useful, and actually make sense. In the new iOS 7 this ethos is demonstrated beautifully. Everything is just so simple to access and use.

When design is used properly and professionally it is a joy to behold. Designers spend hours deciding what they can leave out and so communicate an instruction or message in as simple a way as possible. These things don’t happen by accident, they are achieved through strategy and clear thinking and understanding of a product or service.

Why have an ‘on’ button and an ‘off’ button? When it’s ‘off’ a button switches it ‘on’. And when it is ‘on’, the same button switches it ‘off’ – simple!

If you are a business owner looking for web design Newcastle, London or Liverpool, you should remember that if you are instructing a designer, simplicity can be the most powerful tool.