Imperfection, the New Premium in the Age of Generative AI?
- Rajib Ghosh
- 12 hours ago
- 10 min read
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to designs that feel alive, rough around the edges, a bit raw, imperfect in ways that is mysterious and speak of human touch and a real story. The fingerprints left on a handmade page, the uneven typography that refuses to sit neatly on a grid, the chaotic layers that somehow come together into something vibrant and real.
Designers like David Carson, the creative collective 'tomato', Stefan Sagmeister, April Greiman, Paula Scher, Neville Brody, the Tomato and such, have always inspired me because they weren’t afraid to show the tension inherent in their work. Their pieces never hide behind polished surfaces. Instead, their creative choices celebrate imperfection as part of their story, whether it’s a wobbly letterform or a composition that feels almost chaotic. To me, those “mistakes” made their work pulse with humanity and emotion, something smooth digital precision struggles to replicate.
At the same time, I think I have spent much of my career trying to perfect everything I design. Perfection became a default instinct. In my experience, it helped me deliver quality, but it also locked me into a mindset where every detail felt like it needed resolution. I now believe this obsession does not serve us in a world rediscovering the value of imperfection. I am actively trying to break that habit. I create tangible artefacts with my hands. I work with physical materials again. I take photographs without framing or correcting them. I allow things to remain crooked or unresolved. I believe my mind needs to learn how to let things exist rather than constantly improving them.
Images © Rajib Ghosh
Working with AI has sharpened this tension. I use AI almost every day. When I try to recreate grunge typography or messy print aesthetics through AI systems, the results still feel too clean. Too balanced. Too polite. Even when pushed toward noise and disorder, I think the machine reveals itself. The imperfections appear curated. The mess lacks consequence.
I believe this tension defines our moment. Imperfection is not returning because people miss the past. I propose that it is returning because it feels human in a world saturated with flawless machine-made output.
Images created by Rajib Ghosh on Midjourney AI
The return of analog is not nostalgia.
Digital imagery has become trivial to produce. Anyone can generate polished visuals in seconds. Content is abundant, infinite, and frictionless. When abundance rises, emotional value declines. Cultural theorists anticipated this long ago. Walter Benjamin warned that mechanical reproduction strips artefacts of aura and presence. AI accelerates this condition.
At the same time, analog formats once dismissed as obsolete are returning with force. According to the RIAA, vinyl revenues in the United States exceeded 1.4 billion dollars in 2023, the highest level since 1984. In the United Kingdom, the BPI reports vinyl has grown for seventeen consecutive years and now outsells CDs. In the United Kingdom, vinyl sales have risen for seventeen consecutive years and now outsell CDs, reversing a two-decade decline in physical music consumption, as reported by the BPI.
Film photography shows a similar pattern. Market research estimates the global film camera market at approximately 1.35 billion dollars in 2023, with projections reaching nearly 1.9 billion dollars by 2031. Analysts explicitly link this growth to renewed interest in analog aesthetics and tactile experience. In Japan, surveys indicate more people shot film in 2024 than in 2023, following the launch of the Pentax 17, one of the few new analog cameras introduced in recent years.
Psychological research provides deeper context. Studies by Sedikides and colleagues demonstrate that nostalgia increases perceived authenticity and that authenticity mediates psychological wellbeing. I believe analog media feels honest because it carries delay, constraint, and uncertainty. These qualities make effort visible.
Imperfection, authenticity, and trust
I think humans rely on irregularities to judge sincerity. Research on signaling theory shows that costly signals are trusted because they are difficult to fake at scale. Small imperfections function as such signals.
AI-generated visuals tend to converge. Empirical studies on human co-creation with large language models show that outputs become increasingly homogeneous over time. Research from MIT and Stanford highlights how probabilistic optimization produces stylistic convergence rather than divergence. Critics of generative art echo this concern, noting that models gravitate toward statistically likely outcomes rather than idiosyncratic expression.
I believe this has inverted an old assumption. Perfection once implied quality. Today it often implies automation. In my view, a flawless image triggers doubt, while an imperfect one feels human.
I propose that imperfection has become a trust cue.
Human labour, craft, and the visibility of effort
I think there is a deeper layer here that often goes unspoken. Imperfection reveals labour.
For decades, good design meant hiding effort. The smoother the output, the more successful the system was considered. Sociologist Richard Sennett argues in The Craftsman that modern systems systematically devalue visible effort and tacit skill. AI completes this trajectory by producing outcomes with no visible labour at all.
In my view, when effort disappears, value erodes.
What people are responding to now is not imperfection alone, but evidence of human labour embedded inside it. An uneven ceramic surface signals a hand at work. A film photograph with exposure errors signals waiting, judgment, and uncertainty. A hand-drawn letterform signals irreversible decisions.
Visible labour implies sacrifice. Time. Attention. Risk. Anthropologist Tim Ingold describes craft as thinking through making. I think when labour is legible, work feels earned. When it feels earned, it becomes easier to trust and easier to value.
This explains the renewed interest in craft practices. Ceramics studios report long waiting lists. Printmaking, bookbinding, weaving, woodworking, letterpress, and risograph printing are thriving in niches abandoned by mass production. These practices are inefficient by design. That inefficiency makes labour visible.
AI is extremely good at finishing things. I believe humans are good at knowing when to stop.
Post-industrial mass production versus handcrafted uniqueness
We have seen this pattern before. Post-industrialisation, mass production made products cheaper, faster, and uniform. For a time, uniformity signaled progress. Over time, the logic reversed. As identical products flooded the market, handcrafted and unique pieces became premium.
Economic historians and sociologists document this shift clearly. Sennett describes how industrial systems stripped objects of narrative density by erasing traces of making. Handcrafted objects retained value precisely because they carried visible labour.
We see this in contemporary markets. Hermès continues to hand-stitch Birkin bags, deliberately limiting scale. The premium comes not from materials alone, but from slow, irreducible labour. Independent watchmakers command prices far beyond mass-produced luxury brands, not because of accuracy, but because of authorship.
Platforms like Etsy grew rapidly as mass retail flattened individuality. Etsy reports that buyers increasingly search for “unique” and “handmade” rather than lowest price. The same logic applies to craft coffee, natural wine, bespoke furniture, handmade ceramics, and limited-run prints.
I believe AI accelerates this pattern dramatically.
As AI mass-produces competent writing, imagery, music, and design, baseline quality rises and differentiation collapses. What becomes valuable is what cannot be scaled.
I propose that handcrafted, human-made, and intentionally limited artefacts will further command higher emotional and economic value in the AI era.
Cultures that have always understood this
What feels like a rediscovery has deep cultural roots. In Japan, wabi-sabi values impermanence, asymmetry, and incompleteness. Leonard Koren describes cracks and wear as proof of time and life.
In India, handloom traditions preserve irregularities that distinguish handmade cloth from machine output. These variations signal labour, lineage, and authenticity.
In Islamic art, intentional asymmetry reflects humility before the divine, acknowledging that perfection belongs beyond human hands.
Across African craft traditions, visible tool marks communicate identity and place rather than error.
I believe these cultures never equated perfection with value. They understood that beauty emerges through use, repetition, decay, and repair. What we are witnessing now is remembrance, not invention.
Images created by Rajib Ghosh on Grok AI
Businesses already leveraging imperfection
This shift is no longer just aesthetic. It is strategic.
Brands are learning that imperfection, when paired with a visible creation story, creates emotional connection and long-term differentiation. In a market flooded with competent, machine-generated output, the story of how something is made becomes a critical part of the value proposition.
Golden Goose built its luxury identity around visible wear and distressing. But what makes it work is not just the look. It is the narrative of human handling, individuality, and non-uniformity that customers buy into. The imperfections suggest that no two products are identical, and that difference carries emotional value.
Biti’s Hunter in Vietnam did something similar by rejecting global polish in favor of local rawness. Messy powerlines, graffiti textures, and chaotic urban references were not just visual cues. They told a story about place, culture, and lived reality. Consumers connected not just to the product, but to the narrative behind it.
Sustainability-driven brands are also leveraging this logic. Reclaimed materials, patchwork construction, and visible repair are presented openly rather than hidden. These imperfections tell a story of reuse, constraint, and responsibility. The material itself becomes evidence of values, not just function.
Apple’s recent Apple TV+ identity work is perhaps the clearest signal of where this is heading. Apple could have generated flawless motion graphics entirely in software. Instead, the team printed frames, re-shot them through analog optical setups, and embraced grain, halation, and lens distortion. What Apple shared publicly was not just the final output, but the process itself. That process story matters. It tells the audience that care, experimentation, and judgment were involved. It transforms the work from a polished surface into a crafted artifact. I believe this is a deliberate brand move. Apple is not selling imperfection. It is selling intention.
I think this is the key business insight. In an AI-saturated world, products and visuals alone will not differentiate brands. Process stories will. When consumers understand how something was made, they form an emotional connection with the maker. They sense time, effort, and choice. That emotional dimension builds trust and loyalty in ways that pure output never can.
Imperfection, combined with narrative, becomes a brand asset. Not because it looks different, but because it feels human.
A future shaped by human trace, not just machine output
I believe the future will not be defined by whether AI becomes more powerful. That part is inevitable. The real shift will be in how people value what is created in an AI-saturated world.
The consumer
From the consumer’s point of view, abundance will be overwhelming. Images, products, videos, music, and writing will be everywhere, instantly available, and increasingly indistinguishable in quality. The baseline will be high. Everything will look good enough.
As that happens, I think consumers will become more discerning, not less. They will stop asking, “Is this good?” and start asking, “Was this made with care?” The signal they will look for is not polish, but presence. They will gravitate toward objects, experiences, and brands where they can sense human judgment and effort.
Process stories will matter. Consumers will want to know how something came into being. Who touched it. What decisions were made. What constraints shaped it. A product without a story will feel disposable. A product with visible human intent will feel worth keeping.
Ownership will also change. Fewer things, but things that matter. Fewer streams, more rituals. Fewer generic products, more pieces that feel personal, imperfect, and emotionally anchored.
The creator
For creators, I think the future will be both unsettling and liberating.
AI will take over large parts of execution. Drafting, rendering, ideation at scale, production polish. That will force a shift in identity. The value of the creator will no longer lie in speed or output volume. It will lie in judgment.
Creators will differentiate themselves by what they choose to leave unresolved, by the constraints they impose, and by how they frame problems rather than how fast they produce solutions. Craft will re-enter creative practice, not as nostalgia, but as strategy. Physical making, slow processes, and irreversible decisions will become ways to embed authorship into work.
I believe creators will increasingly work in hybrid loops. They will generate with AI, break the output physically, reintroduce noise, texture, and accident, then bring it back into digital systems. Their signature will be visible not in perfection, but in restraint and deviation.
Most importantly, creators will tell stories about how their work was made. Not as marketing fluff, but as part of the work itself. The process will become content. The making will become meaning.
The business
For businesses, this shift will be strategic, not cosmetic.
In a world where AI makes “good design” cheap and fast, competitive advantage will move away from execution quality and toward credibility. Brands will compete on trust, not just attention.
I think businesses will start investing less in endlessly optimized output and more in systems that make human involvement visible. Limited runs instead of infinite scale. Transparent processes instead of black-box production. Documented making instead of polished mystery.
The brands that win will not hide AI. They will contextualize it. They will show where machines were used and where humans intervened. They will design moments of friction on purpose, because friction signals care.
Apple’s Apple TV+ example points to this future. The analog process was not technically necessary. It was emotionally necessary. It told audiences that someone chose to slow down, experiment, and accept imperfection. That choice becomes a brand signal.
I believe more companies will follow this path. Not by pretending everything is handmade, but by clearly articulating where human judgment still matters.
The system as a whole
Zooming out, I think we are moving toward a new equilibrium.
AI will dominate the middle. Fast, competent, abundant, and interchangeable. Human craft, judgment, and imperfection will sit at the edges, commanding higher emotional and economic value.
This mirrors what happened after industrialisation. Mass production made goods accessible. Craft made them meaningful. The same pattern is now repeating at a cognitive and creative level.
In this future, imperfection is not a flaw to be fixed. It is a signal to be preserved. It tells us that something was made, not merely generated. It connects creator and consumer through shared recognition of effort, time, and intent.
I believe the future belongs to those who understand this balance. Those who use AI without surrendering authorship. Those who design not just outputs, but relationships. And those who remember that meaning does not come from perfection, but from the human traces we choose to leave behind.
Images created by Rajib Ghosh on Midjourney AI
How this will shape design next
I believe the future will not be defined by how powerful AI becomes, but by what we choose to value once power is everywhere. When almost anything can be generated instantly, what will matter is knowing that something was made. Objects and experiences that endure will carry visible traces of judgment, effort, and restraint. Creators will be valued less for speed and more for knowing when to stop. Brands will differentiate not through polish, but through honesty about process. In a world saturated with perfect output, imperfection will signal presence. It will tell us that a human was involved, that choices were made, and that care existed. That is where meaning will live. Not in perfection, but in the human traces we decide to leave behind.
I think the designers who will shape the next decade are the ones who can hold both worlds. Precision and mess. Speed and patience. Tools and hands.
Perfection is no longer the goal. Presence is.
References
Benjamin, W. (1936). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
Sennett, R. (2008). The Craftsman.
Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture.
Sedikides, C. et al. (2023). Nostalgia and authenticity. Journal of Personality.
Koren, L. (1994). Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers.
Pine, B. J., Gilmore, J. H. (1999). The Experience Economy.
RIAA. US Recorded Music Revenues Report 2024.
BPI. UK Music Industry Yearbook 2024.
Future Market Insights. Film Camera Market Forecast 2023–2031.
Etsy. Marketplace trend reports on handmade and unique goods.
MIT and Stanford research on human–AI co-creation and output homogenization.
Apple Design Team. Apple TV+ identity process interviews and documentation.
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