Transparent Ambition

> Apple's designers (and those of many other companies) come back to the idea of translucency giving order and imbuing personality. I cannot for the life of me understand where this idea comes from.

When the company employs designers on a permanent salaried basis, those designers must make changes in order to assure their continued employment. To do otherwise risks the bean counters in the accounting department asking the pointed question: "Why are we employing all these designers when they are not producing anything?". The result is that there must be change for the purpose of assuring the designers continued employment. Result: translucent designs no one wants, but that looked great in the powerpoint presentations used to assure the designers remained employed.

This argument makes no sense, because if it's so obvious what the designers are up to, it should be easy for the bean counters to take that into consideration when deciding whether to fire the designers.

If you believe the designers have some perverse self-centered motivation you might also believe the bean counters do too.