At the risk of stating the obvious, two of my favourite interests are Web Design and Zen Philosophy, and I’m always amazed at how much they have in common.

Take the Enso, a traditional Zen symbol:

At first glance it doesn’t look like much. In fact it looks like, well…..er…a big fat nothing. And in essence that’s what it is. The Enso represents the void, one of the most important principles in Zen but also one of the most difficult to understand.

As westerners I often think we find it hard to appreciate why some Eastern religions place such high regard on the concept of emptiness. That the lack of something can be more important than the presence of something. Coming from cultures and societies that prize acquisition above all else, make it an idea that can seem bizarre, but I don’t believe it has to be.

Take the example of a sculptor. He starts with a lump of stone and chips away to reveal the form beneath. It’s what he takes away that makes the design, not what we adds. There’s a good design quote:

A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away
- Antoine de St-Expurey

Again, at first sight this seems like nonsense. If you take away everything away you’ll be left with completely nothing, which is where you started. But it’s not saying that.

When I start a new design, I’ll fire up photoshop, create a new image 800×600 say, and start building the layout. First of all where are the key elements going to be and what’s the layout. Banner here, navbar over there, main content down there and so on. Obviously a colour scheme has to be picked and eventually the small details have to added. Invariably, and this absolutely always happens, at some point I’ll look at the design and realise I’ve added too much, and its become cluttered. Then I begin the process of stripping bits away til I’m left with something which hopefully I’m happy with.

And this is why I think Zen and all design (not just minimalism) have so much in common. It’s that time when you’re stripping it back to the bare bones of form and function that are so important. The idea of Nothing in Zen can’t be taken literally. It’s not the absence of everything, instead it’s the absence of everything that’s not essential.

But hey, I definitely don’t claim to get it right every time. I’m just learning too.