Perfect Is Dead

Design Lessons From The Uncarved Block

There is a concept in Chinese Taoism called pu , the uncarved block. The common image is of a block of stone in its rough, natural state, untouched by human hands. Anyone who has spent time in the mountains knows the severe sculptural beauty of rock shaped by glacial ice and tectonic movement over aeons. Each irregular hulk of granite decorating the mountains skirts, seemingly unremarkable and inert, is yet alive with the sort of unfussy artistry only nature can achieve. Look closely. A million snowy nights are etched into its surface and still its a work-in-progress, shaped by wind, ice, and stone. Such forms are the work of no mind and can only be created this way. A training exercise in Japanese sumi-e ink brush painting is to deliberately apply dots of ink to a blank page without making a pattern; that is, as patternless as the mountains scattered stones. You soon realize this is humanly impossible, revealing something fundamental about the human mind: anything we create deliberately will have a pattern, a conceptual order. We cant help it. Its how we are. Perhaps if I work at it for years, the sumi-e master can teach me to quiet my mind until my brush moves as unselfconsciously as a bird darts from branch to branch. But here and now, ink brush in hand, paused at the foot of the mountain, I wonder: what can the uncarved block teach me about the creativity of no mind when I cant seem to keep mine quiet?

Embracing Imperfect
Kawai Kanjiro (1890-1966) was a Japanese ceramics master, whose pottery designs embodied the elusive aesthetic principle of wabi sabi. Kanjiro-sensei once defined wabi sabi as ordered poverty, as if to say: in an unadorned room with few possessions, the beauty of simple objects is vastly magnified. More generally, wabi sabi is an attitude towards ones craft that embraces imperfection. There is something delightfully indecent about the rough-hewn, lopsided form of a Japanese chawan (tea bowl) that reminds one of the uncarved block of granite, or the pockmarked face and body of a portly old man. With pottery, as with people, imperfection lends character, memorability, one-of-a-kind-ness.

Japanese-style tea bowl (Michael Simmons)

For wabi sabi practitioners, perfection is a head trip, separating you from the innate intelligence of your handiwork. Perfect symmetry and exact geometry are the Platonic territory of rationality and machine-manufacturing, ultimate expressions of abstract thinking. While we may appreciate exactitude with the part of ourselves that delights in formal pattern, there is an unappreciated corollary to perfection: a perfect form is dead. It has no room to grow, move, stretch, or transform, because any change spells a deviation from perfection. Perfection is rigid, stultifying to innovation, end-all-be-all, boring. Imperfect form is alive, in flux, starts arguments, and raises questions: the deliberately accidental effect of ink running down a page, the strangely askew belly of a Japanese tea bowlhell, the way this articles text and images flow to fit a window of any size trades pixel-perfect layout for something that can live on anyones screen. Its not so different from the tea bowl that looks different from every angle, which is why one turns it round and round in admiration during a tea ceremony. Even machine-made objects and even software, grow thankfully imperfect through human use and habitation, populated by our fingerprints, our breadcrumbs, our content. Its not so different from the running inks patternless pattern, that can never be fully grasped, no matter how long you look; in fact, its pattern will appear to change over time, for you yourself are changing.

Your best work, wisest choices, and most graceful moves emerge from moments of no mind. Lessons for Process
I am not suggesting that anyone put pimples on their user interfaces or give their grids crooked edges. The lessons here are not about finished forms and products; theyre about creative processthe living relationship between you and your work.

1. We dont know where inspiration strikes from. Thats exactly the point. Your

best work, wisest choices, and most graceful moves emerge from moments of no mind. Often, they are so fleeting you dont even notice. Your job is to make room for these moments in your life, take notice, and carry forward what arises.
2. A creative persons mind naturally seeks perfection; you wouldnt be doing the

work otherwise. Be satisfied with the seeking itself. Your best work is always ahead of you.
3. Avoid the certain death of perfection: embrace the idea that everything is a

prototype. Allow your current work to be alive, open to incremental improvement or radical transformation, as necessary. In holding the very first cardboard and tape mock-up of a product, or the first 30-second pencil sketch of a layout or storyboard, see in it the rough form of the uncarved block. Not embarrassingly imperfect, but unselfconsciously inspired. Alive, going somewhere.

References:
Tea bowl created & photographed by Michael Simmons The Tao of Pooh Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren We Do Not Work Alone: The Thoughts of Kanjiro Kawawi (1953)