Zen and Design

By Matthew May in Fast Company's Co.DESIGN, a piece that offers some "Zen design principles." 

7 Design Principles, Inspired By Zen Wisdom 

WANT TO BECOME THE NEXT STEVE JOBS--OR JUST UNDERSTAND HIS NEAR-SPIRITUAL DEVOTION TO SIMPLICITY? THIS PRIMER, OUTLINING THE MAIN TENETS OF ZEN DESIGN, WILL HELP. 

One of the best-known photographs of the late Steve Jobs pictures him sitting in the middle of the living room of his Los Altos house, circa 1982. There isn’t much in the room, save an audio system and a Tiffany lamp. Jobs is sipping tea, sitting yoga-style on a mat, with but a few books around him. The picture speaks volumes about the less-is-more motive behind every Apple product designed under his command.

As Warren Berger wrote on Co.Design, Jobs’s love for elegantly simple, intuitive design is widely attributed to his appreciation of Zen philosophy (Jobs was a practicing Buddhist). But while many people might be familiar with Zen as a broad concept, far fewer are knowledgeable of the key aesthetic principles that collectively comprise the "Zen of design." 

To understand the Zen principles, a good starting point is shibumi. It is an overarching concept, an ideal. It has no precise definition in Japanese, but its meaning is reserved for objects and experiences that exhibit in paradox and all at once the very best of everything and nothing: Elegant simplicity. Effortless effectiveness. Understated excellence. Beautiful imperfection. 

James Michener referred to shibumi in his 1968 novel Iberia, writing that it can’t be translated and has no explanation. In his 1972 book, The Unknown Craftsman, Soetsu Yanagi talked about shibumi in the context of art, writing that a true work of art is one with intentionally imperfect beauty that makes an artist of the viewer. In the 1979 best-selling spy novel Shibumi, the author Trevanian (the nom de plume of Dr. Rodney William Whitaker) wrote, "Shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances." 

Shibumi was first introduced to the West by House Beautiful in 1960. Nearly 40 years later, architect Sarah Susanka reintroduced shibumi in her 1998 book The Not So Big House: "The quality of shibumi evolves out of a process of complexity, though none of this complexity shows in the result. It often seems to arise when an architect is striving to meet a particular design challenge. When something has been designed really well, it has an understated, effortless beauty, and it really works. That’s shibumi." 

The process may be complex, but these seven Zen principles can help you approach shibumi in your own designs: 

The seven principles are 

1. Austerity 
2. Simplicity 
3. Naturalness 
4. Subtlety 
5. Imperfection; asymmetry 
6. Break from routine 
7. Stillness; tranquility