When we first design and build a site we try to make it perfect. Over time we add something here, take away something there, and in so doing begin to leave some imperfections. When those imperfection somehow manage to work together, when they become familar things we enjoy even though they’re less than perfect, the site then has a wabi-sabi quality.

Wabi-Sabi is such an interesting subject and I agree as Westerer I’m probably not completely understanding it. I’ll watch for it and listen for it, and perhaps one day I’ll be ready for it to come to me.

“Architecture can’t fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, but you need to put some of that turmoil into the architecture, or it isn’t real.”

I try and take this approach in my web design. You need something to disrupt the normality of design. Otherwise, it becomes hard to capture people’s attention. I feel the Wabi-Sabi aesthetic is a lot like this.

Great article – keep up the great work.

D

The concept works in filmmaking, too. Often when we’re doing a shot for a tv commercial or whatever, we’ll introduce just a little bit of imperfection or organic elements to really help sell the shot. Maybe it’s a little bit of added camera shake, or grain, or a subtle reframing that doesn’t follow the grid perfectly. By playing with a bit of the organic touch, things definitely get a lot more interesting.

And I’d forgotten about Wabi Sabi, but like blue VW bugs on the freeway, now I am seeing examples everywhere.

Charlotte, I love that old tree. From that angle, it looks something like a centaur in pain….

Young, I didn’t feel comfortable writing too much about sumi-e paintings, mostly because I’m so damned ignorant about them. As with the Japanese brush painting I cited, I love them, but I don’t pretend to grasp their complexities and nuances. I did think about the game of Go several times during the article, but for some inexplicable reason probably having to do with early senility, the reference never made it into the article. It would have been something like “Wabi sabi is like the game of Go — you can learn it in an hour but take a lifetime to understand it.”

Ben, the power plant is still there, powering this very computer, I believe.

Muskrat, you are absolutely correct that wabi-sabi is much more than a discrete design aesthetic, it is a way of life. I wouldn’t presume to lecture on wabi-sabi as a life aesthetic.