Simple to Ornate and Back Again (2024)

Summary

Art history shows us that we tend to move between adding “unnecessary” elaborate decorations to clean styles and back again. It’s almost an endless cycle repeated over and over.This cycle happens in the different arts and other fields where design is involved, like software. Let’s trace it in architecture first.Here is the Abbey Church of St James in Hungary (1206), a clear example of the Romanesque style. By its side, Notre Dame, completed in 1345. Take a moment to appreciate all the decorations in the second picture not present in the first one.This tendency to add more details and decorations to an already functioning element of architecture went out of fashion (like it had done in previous periods). Here, you can compare Notre Dame with the Cathedral of Pienza, an example of Renaissance architecture.So, 250 years to realize again that we don’t want to add so many grandiose elements and prefer simplicity?If we move to Baroque and Rococo, it’s like going in the opposite direction again, adding more and more decorations that weren’t essential to the buildings. Here’s the Cathedral of Pienza compared to the Catherine Palace in Russia.But after a while, we got tired and returned to simple and clear lines.Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.CThe cycle between this highly detailed and elaborate style and returning to simple and clean elements is not perfect. Art is a complicated combination of influence, technique available at the time, and the historical context in which it’s developed. However, the pattern is there.The cycle is not only present in architecture. It can also be found in painting, photography, sculpting, literature, theatre, and even fashion. So it’s not surprising that we see it in software.This is one of the first text editors: vi. It was created in 1978, and it is as simple as it gets visually. Although you need to learn a shortcut or two to use it :)Here’s Microsoft Word, the king of text editors for a long time.You could say it’s just the te...