Look at anything you see around you; a building you see through the window, a roller blind, your car, a bus passing by, the screen you are reading this text on, even this software itself.
All of these are products of design. So, do you think these designs are "perfect"? They may not be for me, they are okay for you, they are perfect for someone else.
As people working in the design world, we always seek perfection, no different from the focus of our work and design, and perfection is always an attractive but unattainable ideal.
Can you define perfection without giving away your own opinion?
From any architectural work to men's underwear; from how a product looks from the outside as a remedy for a wound to the interfaces of digital applications, designers want people to establish deep connections with the products they design, and they want these products to function flawlessly. This is actually a race, and the products around us are the ones who have already won this race.
Since those involved in design are constantly thinking and trying new things, and the results are better, beautiful, functional or just plain pleasing to the eye than the previous ones, it usually doesn’t seem possible to reach this absolute perfection that I am trying to talk about.
Another example from a familiar perspective, I see and hear that Apple’s minimalist product design approach is admired and even praised by many people due to its clean and stylish lines. However, on the other hand, some people find this minimal design language too sterile, impersonal and cold. I know people who think in both ways.
I would like to give another example from a completely different area. Fashion. While the eye-catching products of design-oriented and made-to-order (MTO) brands such as Altan Bottier or TLB Mallorca seem perfect to some people due to their designs, shapes, models, molds and the fact that traditional methods are incorporated into the production model.
The new generation may find them impractical and uncomfortable, and flashy for daily life. Which of the perfection approaches here is correct? Sturdy and stylish shoes made of good quality leather materials or sneakers made of mainly plastic-based materials?
Here, even I personally cannot describe to you without highlighting -albeit unintentionally- the things that express perfection to me, I cannot even describe to you without somehow dictating my already held opinion.
I would like to give another example from a very different discipline. While in traditional Japanese design we talk about simplicity, the use of natural materials and an unadorned narrative, on the other side of the world, for example, in Baroque design there is a magnificence and plenty of ornamentation.
So which of these do you think is perfect? The Japanese approach to design, the Baroque approach or the Scandinavian design?
Perfection defines a perception that varies from person to person and does not seem easy for everyone to find a common denominator for a product that emerges.
In architecture, the Parthenon in Greece is an example of a building form that seems perfect to some with its classical proportions, while the Taj Mahal can very well represent perfection in architecture with its detailed workmanship and symmetry. Which is it, Roman or Indian?
Comparisons on this subject could go on forever, so I'll stop giving examples here for now.
Describing perfection subjectively
What I want to talk about here is that the definition of perfection is constantly changing under the influence of subjective tastes, what the culture we live in has shown us in the past, the functional needs of the product and the variability of other developing technologies related to design.
Speaking for myself, when I design a wrap on a bus, in the websites I prepare, in printed materials, in corporate identity materials or, in a simpler example, what I always have in mind is to find the simplest, most readable form of the message I want to give. Most importantly, I want to be able to tell what I want to tell without giving people a puzzle to solve.
That's why I try to do this job with sharp lines, as few shadows as possible, plain fonts and appropriate colors.
In my opinion, this is the form a corporate structure should use when communicating, but you must have seen the graphics Spotify used at its traditional Wrapped event at the end of 2024, I think it is a form of communication that never suits a company like Spotify, but according to Spotify's corporate communications team, it has been accepted as perfect.
What we consider perfect today is not certain that it will be valued the same tomorrow. The best example of this is perhaps Web 2.0.
Web 2.0, which entered our lives with a design approach that allowed users to interact on websites and made this task easier, represented a brand new form that made room for user-generated content such as bright colors, rounded corners, glassy surfaces, distinct gradients, large buttons, forums and interactive content management systems.
However, when designing the interfaces of websites, we are now influenced by other trends and tend towards simplicity.
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I think designing itself is an effort to seek perfection; but keeping what already exists, what works for us and the new perspectives that come with it in a constant state of motion seems more inclusive, adaptable and meaningful in terms of the act of designing.
We will continue to seek perfection and the journey on this path will never end anywhere in the world. At the same time, this search will also be what moves the world of design forward and stimulates creativity.
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