Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. — Albert Einstein.
Minimalism isn’t about being ascetic. For me, it stems from the desire to create something holistically beautiful. This encompasses more than visual design: the goal is to build an elegant system. In a beautiful system, every material—CSS, XHTML and Server-side templating—works together, each doing what it is best at.
These system-building ideals very quickly meet with demanding realities: time constraints, browser support, load times, etc. It is the designer’s job to carefully make compromises while balancing the desired end results. For some this means a wrapping div, for others a presentational table.
The minimalist chooses to compromise by reducing scope, because it is the most holistically beautiful option.
See also: “Minimalism isn’t about doing less as much as it is about doing as little as needed”.
It’s going to be here:
Photo by Saturnism on Flickr
…with folks like Matt Mullenweg, Automattic’s CBBQTT, and Jane Wells, the gal behind WordPress 2.7’s awesome re-design. Alex King of Crowd Favorite will also be speaking (woo hoo!).
You can read more about it here. You should come and hang out with me.
There are many good reasons to be blogging, among them: sharing what you care about, making friends and building a rapport online.
I can think of one very good reason not to blog: vanity.
By publishing, I am making a pact with you, claiming that this post will be better than whatever is at hand in the real world. That is a lofty claim. It takes effort to produce something that doesn’t have you, the reader, walking away feeling ripped off. It drives me nuts when publishers do not realize this, trying through alchemy to turn “user-generated” content into a quick buck with little to no effort on their end. There are no shortcuts here; I will never do that.
After moving to Denver, starting at a new job with the wonderful Crowd Favorite and enrolling in a new school, blogging was effort I didn’t feel like putting up. Well, now things have settled a bit and I’m ready to put finger to key and share some things I care about in a way that will hopefully be worth your time. Thanks for lending it.