I used to think that being creative means to start from zero and build up something new, but recently I’ve begun to feel that what designers do is kind of like a clean-up. For example, the reason why Japanese Zen temples are so beautiful is not so much because of the architecture or the gardens themselves but because the temples are cleaned up well. Cleaning up is to take good care of the borderline between the natural and the artificial, and that process, if continued for a long time, brings forth something like a faint shoreline between what’s natural and what’s man-made. That littoral strand is really where the essence of beauty lies in Japanese gardens and Zen temples. I think that is similar to what we do. Here’s another example. When you typeset a sentence, you don’t need an unusual font. All you need is a simple font, with each and every letter carefully considered, and that is enough to give the typography its power. It is just as how each and every leaf on a tree grows in consciousness of the sunlight and also how each and every hair on an animal’s skin grows according to its own will. A fine coat of fur on a live animal is so beautiful, but once the animal is killed and stuffed, the beauty is gone.
Kenya Hara.
