design

Sottsass came up in a modernist design world that valued rigidity, utility, and simplicity; asking designers to ask themselves what is necessary and drop everything else. As famed industrial designer Dieter Rams has said, “Good design is as little design as possible.” Sottsass epitomizes basically the complete opposite of that.

Sottsass’s work made the case for the necessity of the superfluous. Expressive use of color, form, and decorative elements are elemental to design done well. In the modern era, design is leaning into sensuality and excitement too. 

The most fundamental software infrastructure has become commoditized to the point where most of the innovation is now created at the interface with end users. In the consumer internet world in particular, the marginal cost of software is zero, and design is now the differentiator.