The Perfect Line
I’m drawing on my tablet in FLASH; a line displeases me and I hit “Apple + Z” to undo. Again. Again. Again.
The majority of my time sketching is spent this way. In search for the perfect line. And a few moments later, the perfect line after the that.
Designers on the whole are stricken with OCD, myself included. We mull over the minutiae of typefaces and composition to the pixel. Everything needs to be pixel perfect.
Luckily in our digital age, perfection is within reach. The perfect circle is just a click and drag away. The pen tool doesn’t bleed on the grain of the page. The eraser tool doesn’t scatter debris or leave nasty scars. No longer. Nothing is above an “Apple + Z (or Control + Z)” undo.
The challenge for us now is to combat this digital precision. To recreate bleeding ink with the pen tool. To free-hand a circle. To make design human again.
Digital design should be idiosyncratic without hindering function. We need to inject our personalities into the 1’s and 0’s on the screen. We need to recognize that digital perfection is overrated, and easily replicated. And leave room in our design for momentary emotional decisions that elevates it from the wireframes, lest we come its slave.
The perfect line shouldn’t be infinitely straight, but wiggles in ways that feels right at that finite moment. That’s when we are in control and not the machine.
