Richard Loewy's MAYA: better! different! but not TOO different...

The Atlantic had a nice piece on Richard Loewy's design aesthetic:

Loewy had an uncanny sense of how to make things fashionable. He believed that consumers are torn between two opposing forces: neophilia, a curiosity about new things; and neophobia, a fear of anything too new. As a result, they gravitate to products that are bold, but instantly comprehensible. Loewy called his grand theory “Most Advanced Yet Acceptable”—MAYA. He said to sell something surprising, make it familiar; and to sell something familiar, make it surprising.

Interesting stuff. It reminds me of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and its description of how we know "Quality", the Tao, how something is good at being whatever it is, in a circular way: we learn define the quality as we recognize the quality in the instances of the thing we're defining.