MAYA (Most Advanced yet Acceptable) Principle
The core value of the MAYA principle is designing for future and balancing the present design. In 1951, Raymond Loewy (1893–1986) described his design strategy: It is essential to design for future but improve the present product gradually. He is the father of industrial design in the 50s. He found his industrial design company in 1929. Over the next 50 years, he designed the exterior graphic on Air Force One, Coke bottles, the Shell Oil logo, and the Greyhound logo. In his autobiography, he described the design strategy as “Most Advanced Yet Acceptable” which is the most classic design principle for everything today. Raymond Loewy is not only a cool industrial designer in 1950s but also a indecisive person that discovered people like familiar things yet innovative. People want radical new things based on the band’s previous products. Raymond believed customers look forward to new things but have fear of anything totally too new. It’s like a gradual evolution, not like a total revolution. People desire a slightly futuristic design but also still like the previous design. That explains why people feel excited about surprising new generation of products but know it belongs to specific brand’s design language.
The Shock Zone
Raymond is not like typical designers who also understand the psychology of consumers. The shock zone is the critical area that meets customers’ desires. It is like a pendulum that swings from the old to the new, similar to a war between the urge for the new and exciting, to the old and familiar. Therefore designers have to understand where the shock zone is for each problem settle with a final design that is both new and familiar for customers.
The Early Development of the MAYA Principle
Loewy shaped the aesthetic of American culture in the 20th century. The Lucky Strike cigarette package is one of the first classic works I came across when I studied industrial design in college. I was impressed with this design because of the simple circle red target, contrasted with the white background and it is iconic design for that time period. Loewy improved Lucky Strike’s package to attract more women customers. Loewy gave the customers a new branding image but also kept the elements to make users feel familiar with the previous design. The way he improved the design matches his thought- designing for a broader market that includes women. Everyone can understand and accept the design.
How the MAYA Principle is Still Used Today
Today, Apple uses this method to create their products. The good example is how the ipod designer designed and improved the iPod gradually. When the first iPod was launched, it was a whole new product. Although it was a new kind of device to control and play music, it was still intuitive and familiar. After that, the iPod designer didn’t completely redesign it, instead he gradually made minor changes with each iteration that made the evolution of the device more gradual and streamlined. When the technology became more advanced, the designers removed the whole control panel and consumers still felt the familiarity of the previous designs.
Destructive Innovation
Loewy identified how certain massive products established by large companies are viewed as the norms in their own fields. Every industry has their recognizable colors and images. As we progress in time, with new product designs continuously being launched, consumers have the opportunity to either accept or reject these new products. Oftentimes, the designs that keep a certain familiarity into new designs has proven to be successful over time. The public knows the trends and can accept the styling and visual standard of various products. Sometimes a new design can depart too far from the norm suddenly, which comes with degrees of risk. The risk increases if the gap between the advance product and norm too far. Large companies can create very successful products by only making minor changes in styling. A smaller company does not have as much influence by comparison because they are at the fringes of their fields and oftentimes can only follow the norms established by the larger companies.
This method is applied in many industries today. Big companies make their norms to allow their products and services to be familiar. Designers understand the rules and follow the rules in designing products. Large companies have more powerful tools to impact the norms of design and are able to use their established influence to make new designs accepted by the overall public. Small companies take more of a creative risk if their products depart too far from the norms.
This principle gives some companies ideas that allow them to avoid failure. The trend is important today. When I went to supplier factories for laptop design, they knew what norms the designers have to follow. For example, material’s visual appearance, feel, texture, and other design elements — all of which are similar for all laptop brands in the market. Small companies follow what big companies do. It probably is not a good thing for innovation, but it’s good for business in the short term. The most innovation design is naturally a big departure from established norms and therefore risky, but it’s the only way to truly innovate. It takes time to make new things become acceptable. Mostly big companies have this powerful tool. It is more risky and costly for a small company to try to create very dramatic and destructive innovations. From the Airbnb and Uber story, I can understand how new service design is based on another existing service design that people already understand. When Airbnb was first established, it was described as the “eBay for homes,” in that people already had an understanding of what eBay was, so it was a sort of departure from goods on eBay to homes on an eBay-like platform. After that, Uber was used in a similar fashion to describe new service oriented startup ideas.
Carma Gorman list five risks in her book “The Industrial Design Reader” that may happen to large or small companies according to Loewy MAYA principle.
- A large company takes a risk if they only maintain their products with minor design changes until a competitor comes along with a more innovative and risky design.
- A small company can’t make progress after they only follow other large companies design. It will eventually go out of the business.
- Calculating risk is a pathway to a successful business operation.
- Calculating risk should base on MAYA stage.
- Identify the current business climate or competitive landscape of any particular product or service.
Key Learning
Today design has become more consistent. Most designers follow normal trends because it is more acceptable. There is a certain frame established under the most followed kind of creativity. Is it a good thing for design? It can be described as a double-edged sword. On one side is the norm, and what is most expected. On the other side, there is what is truly new and innovative. The only way for design to move forward is to follow what is more new and innovative, yet that involves taking on more creative risk — but not too risky, as directed by the MAYA principle.
Bibliography
Matthew Reitman, “How Raymond Loewy’s MAYA Principle Has Come to Define Everything Popular” RealClear Life, 2017
http://www.realclearlife.com/design/raymond-loweys-maya-theory-defines-anything-popular-today/
Derek Thompson, “The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything”
The Atlantic JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 ISSUE
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/what-makes-things-cool/508772/
Raymond Loewy Official Blog
