Compress
Find the smallest version that still carries everything.
The logo that works as a favicon.
Seen in Otl Aicher, pictograms for the Munich Olympics, 1972
Try it on your work
Make the smallest version of the thing you're working on that still does what it does: pocket-sized, one-piece, single-gesture. Stop when the next reduction would lose function, not just size. The compressed version is the definition.
Reduce your project to one sentence a stranger would understand, then to five words, then to one. You won't use the one word, but everything you cut on the way down was ranked by the cutting.
Collapse a multi-step procedure to the fewest steps that still produce the result, merging rather than skipping. Stop when the next merge would break the output. Count the ceremony you removed; that number is a culture measurement.
How it has been used
Reduce to the minimum that loses nothing essential: the six-word story, the logo from the crest, the abstract that actually contains the paper. The move forbids losing the load-bearing: compression that drops meaning is just cutting, and the burden of proof is on the short version.
Where it leads
Grouped under Take something away