DESIGN LENS
How Learning to Design by Subtraction Shapes My
UX Judgment
What graphite rubout taught me about UX judgment - and why restraint is as much an ethical choice as a design one.
A Question I Didn't Expect
Someone once asked me a question I didn’t expect in a design group:
“What’s your favorite illustrative technique?”
My answer was "Graphite rubout".
Maybe it could have sounded obscure or clever in the moment, but my reasoning was anything but:
it fundamentally shaped how I learned to see.
"The darkness does not destroy the light; it defines it."
- Brene Brown
The Discipline Behind The Technique
In graphite rubout, the technique doesn't begin on a white canvas. It begins its process in the dark. Loose graphite is applied over the entire page, and establishes the tonal range before any form can be defined.
From this darkness, the image cannot reasonably be constructed by adding marks.
It must be revealed by removing them.
Like sculpture, the artist has to sense the form before it’s visible, then work toward materializing the vision gradually. Remove too much and the structure collapses. Remove too little and nothing fully emerges.
The discipline isn’t as much precision as it is judgment; it's knowing where to sculpt and what to leave intact.
My early training at ArtCenter College of Design emphasized perceptual rigor long before polish.
In illustration, that rigor followed a clear hierarchy:
Structure came first - establishing meaning and separating substance from noise.
Value followed, carving hierarchy and constraint.
Hue arrived last, once the underlying system could support it.
At the time, I thought this was solely about learning how to create art - in hindsight I was learning how to see before I act.
"The darkness does not destroy the light; it defines it."
- Brene Brown
Cognitive Load as a Timing Problem
In UX, cognitive load is frequently framed in terms of quantity: too many steps, too much information, too many choices.
At the root, I see the issue is often timing.
Load increases when information arrives before readiness, when hierarchy doesn’t reflect intent, when hesitation - emotional or social - goes unaddressed, or when systems ask for certainty before trust has formed.
In those moments, adding clarity can actually increase friction.
What helps is removing the wrong demands at the wrong moment - before they compete with what matters.
Design Through Negative Space
Because of this, I don’t primarily think of my design goal as ultimately features addition.
I think in terms of how I hold and shape the attention that is present.
Attention is valuable, finite and contextual. Every additional signal competes with something the user is already carrying. Like a pot with too many ingredients, flavors can dilute and compete. Handling complexity then, is about knowing what to spotlight and how to both reinforce and support what is already there; and subtraction, in this sense, is more than an aesthetic preference. It becomes a responsibility.
Complexity, then, is not the actual problem space, and doesn’t need to be eliminated. Rather, it needs to be sequenced: surfaced when attention is strong enough to support it.
This is where design through negative space becomes operational, and more than a mere stylistic or philosophical one.
Where Subtraction Becomes Strategy
This way of thinking tends to show up quietly:
-
It’s present in onboarding flows where early decisions are presented one-by-one.
-
In interfaces that resist density until users are ready.
-
In systems that feel obvious only after unnecessary noise has been cleared away.
The goal isn’t minimalism for its own sake. It’s alignment between multiple touchpoints: between what the system is asking, what the user is ready for, and how the experience is perceived.
Making the Invisible Visible
As my work has expanded across both digital and physical systems, I’ve learned that how I see problems is often just as valuable as what ultimately ships.
Naming this lens helps make that judgment legible.
It explains why I tend to focus upstream of polish, and why restraint, for me, is as much an ethical choice as a design one.
It’s a way of articulating decisions that are often felt before they’re spoken.
A way of making invisible work visible.
The Through Line
Graphite Rubout study, Full Metal Jacket, 2003
Clarity is more than increased consumption.
Sometimes it comes from recognizing what’s getting in the way, and knowing how to edit and shape what exists.
That idea has been with me since my earliest art training, and it continues to shape how I design UX systems today.