Ceramics: Design As Subtraction or Addition

Lately I've been obsessed in ceramics with making cylinders and then making lids or bottoms to turn them into basically what is a round box.  And isn't that what design is?  The arrangement of shapes in a composition?  

Above are the salt and pepper cellars I made while playing around one morning with round cookie cutters and some sculpture mix.  I made the lids to the containers by scoring and slipping co-centric circles together to fit into the top .  What stirs me is design at its simplest or its basic geometric form.  I injected contrast into the pair with color: Jim Bob glaze and Stormy Blue glaze.