Sasha Lantukh

Simply good vs simply bad.

March 13, 2026

Photo by Alexa Portoraro

Bad simplicity is rushed.
Unfocused.
It doesn’t really have a goal in mind.

Things get removed just to make something “clean.”

Good simplicity is different. It comes from care.

Care about typography.
Care about colour combinations.
Care about small details.
And most importantly — clarity of purpose.

Because without a goal, you don’t know what to remove.

Philosophers once believed something interesting about taste.

Plato believed beauty exists as perfect forms — ideal templates beyond the messy world we see. Maybe that’s why we sometimes feel when something is off. As if a design is trying — but failing — to reach a clearer version of itself: a lost paradise.

Later, Aristotle linked beauty with fitness for purpose and argued that apprehension of the beautiful is connected with knowledge. An honest object is one that suits what it is meant to do — and an honourable, knowledgeable person would consider it beautiful.

In the 18th century, thinkers like Alexander Gerard even tried to list principles behind aesthetic judgement: novelty, sublimity, beauty, imitation, harmony, oddity (humorousness), and virtue.

Over the last century, taste became almost entirely subjective.
Anything could be art.
Anything could be beautiful.

Which can be a useful life hack — if you hate something, learn to love it. A messy garden, a crumbled street in an old Portuguese town…

But in design, that idea doesn’t fully work.

Good design still asks for judgement.
For craft.
For care.

Maybe taste isn’t just personal preference.
Maybe it’s something we refine over time — like learning to notice the flavours in a good drink.

And maybe simplicity isn’t about removing things.
It’s about bringing a design closer to the form it was always meant to have.

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