Sim­plic­i­ty is not the goal. It is the by-prod­uct of a good idea and mod­est expec­ta­tions. Thus spake design­er Paul Rand, a man who knew some­thing about mak­ing an impres­sion, hav­ing cre­at­ed icon­ic logos for such imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able brands as ABC, IBM, and UPS. An exam­ple of Rand’s obser­va­tion, La Lin­ea, aka Mr. Line, a beloved and decep­tive­ly sim­ple car­toon char­ac­ter drawn with a sin­gle unbro­ken line, began as a shill for an Ital­ian cook­ware com­pa­ny. No mat­ter what he man­ages to get up to in two or three min­utes, it’s deter­mined that he’ll even­tu­al­ly butt up against the lim­i­ta­tions of his lin­eal real­i­ty. His chat­ter­ing, apoplec­tic response proved such a hit with view­ers that a few episodes in, the cook­ware con­nec­tion was sev­ered. Mr. Line went on to become a glob­al star in his own right, appear­ing in 90 short ani­ma­tions through­out his 15-year his­to­ry, start­ing in 1971. Find many of the episodes on YouTube here. The for­mu­la does sound rather sim­ple. Ani­ma­tor Osval­do Cavan­doli starts each episode by draw­ing a hor­i­zon­tal line in white …