Nature

Organic forms are often physically complex. Because of their familiarity, however, it is often possible to generate extremely complex designs that do not overwhelm the user. Organic elements tend to have a large number of associations on which a design may play.

Mechanical recreation of natural forms without transformation is merely the creation of similarity, and a similarity that is normally detectable by the user. For this reason, the "copying" of nature is generally not considered an intelligent strategy in design.

"Inorganic" definitions of nature, which can include music, cosmology, numerology, astrology, mathematics and humanity are discussed elsewhere in this project, but many designers consider them part of nature.