There is one attribute of good design that I often see overlooked: restraint. Restraint in design is the quality of holding yourself back and implementing something which solves the problem in the simplest way possible. Oftentimes designers want to show off, imprint their own identity on a piece of work or simply get carried away, producing work that is good but losing simplicity and elegance in the process.

Giving your work an identity certainly doesn’t mean you’re losing restraint — it’s actually a good practice — but it may lead down the road of implementing too many design elements for the sake of design elements — things that don’t really need to be there in order to solve the problem. Instead, apply your identity to the core elements — things that you absolutely cannot take out — and throw away the rest. What you’ll achieve is a product that’s simple, yet bears your own mark upon it.

Let’s take a look at a set of modern mobile phones:

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