Tony Poor

Axl Rose went through 13 years, nearly a dozen band members, and at least $13 million dollars to release the 14-track Chinese Democracy, reportedly due to his quest for perfectionism. It ended up grossly underselling, and, though decent in its own right, will never come close to matching the legacy of Appetite for Destruction.

Many designers have lots in common with Axl Rose. I know I do. Most of us battle perfectionism because we know that perfect is the enemy of good. But I believe that this can be extended:

In design, perfect is a myth. It is unattainable.

Any given design problem raises an infinite number of possible solutions. Additionally, design seems to more frequently involve decisions between difficult tradeoffs than between definitive notions of good and bad. With so many possibilities and tradeoffs (what Löwgren and Spiekermann call the “infinite complexity” of design), the “perfect” solution likely does not exist, and, even if it does, it’s impossible to definitively know if we have attained it.

It’s understandable that so many designers are perfectionists, though (just after I started writing this, for example, Dustin Curtis wrote a piece outlining his own struggles with perfectionism). It’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, the trait encapsulates many symptoms that are beneficial or even necessary to phenomenal designers: an undying devotion to the tiniest details, for example, or the ability to recognize potential problems in a refined product.

Nonetheless, I can’t name a single released product that I believe to be flawless. (And yes, that includes those from Cupertino.) Many designers want to change the world, but change most often comes at an incremental pace and can, believe it or not, arrive with an imperfect product.

Chinese Democracy was okay. But we can choose to be Axl Rose, try our hands at perfect, and fail anyway, or we can utilize our perfectionist talents, rein them in a little, and release wonderfully good products that may have flaws but improve people’s lives regardless.