“Let’s do a gradient here, throw in a drop shadow, blur the background, do a neon glow on the font, and make everything beveled!”

Oh no! That’s a recipe for disaster! Sometimes all you need is one color and a pen tool to make everything work. The hardest task of all is knowing when to use which tool to create the visual effect (and the corresponding emotional effect) that is desired for a particular purpose.

That is the art of restraint.