The retired architect in Austin who told me my layout was lazy

I was framing out a custom bookshelf wall for a client last spring and this older guy walks in off the street, just watching me from the doorway. It was a hot Tuesday and I had already redone the top shelf spacing twice because the original plan looked off. He finally said, 'You're not building for the books, you're building for the eyes, and that's why it feels wrong.' I laughed it off, but then he showed me how he used to measure the actual spines of his own collection before cutting a single board. I mean, I've been doing this for 8 years and always thought symmetry was the goal, but he was right that function should drive the design, not the other way around. It bugged me for days because he was a stranger and still saw the flaw in 10 minutes. Has anyone else had a random passerby point out something obvious that you missed for years?

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