Harmonious writing

Over at presentationzen.com, Garr Reynolds has a post entitled Wa: the key to clear, harmonious design. He begins by saying "if there is one principle that reveals the essence of the Zen aesthetic found in Japanese traditional art and design -- and life in general -- it is harmony. The kanji that has been used in Japan for the past 1300 years or so to represent this concept is 和 (wa)." He offers "just seven things to think about as you strive to bring more wa into your own design solutions." They are:

1. Embrace economy of materials and means
2. Repeat design elements
3. Keep things clean and clutter-free
4. Avoid symmetry
5. Avoid the obvious in favor of the subtle
6. Think not only of yourself, but of the other
7. Remain humble and modest

Those seven things work for the writer, as well. And it's not a bad idea to think of writing as verbal design. I have been working for the past several months to write an essence statement for a new venture. I finally got it down to four sentences:

Every company has the few who decide and the many who determine. That is, the few decide what needs to happen and the many determine how successfully it actually does happen. And between the few and the many, there's a chasm. We cross the chasm, to connect the few with the many.

If words are materials and sentences are means, I think we achieved an economy of materials and means with this statement. We repeated design elements with "the few" and "the many," and also with the alliteration of decide/determine, and cross/chasm/connect (with a nod to Geoffrey A. Moore). It's clean, but not as clutter-free as I would like (I would prefer to do without the second sentence). Symmetry was not an issue here. Our choice of words took us out of the more obvious ways to describe what we do. And let's lump the last two things together -- think not of yourself and remain humble and modest. Our credo in this venture is "subsume and resonate," (with a nod to Ralph Siu) where subsume reminds us "to find our place as part of something more comprehensive than ourselves" and resonate directs us "to evoke a broadly shared feeling, belief or understanding." You can find our modest beginnings of this conversation at subsumeandresonate.com