Month: June 2015

Minimalism

It’s TED Talk Tuesday!

Today we’re looking at a talk by Graham Hill, writer and designer, about how decluttering your life can lead to increased happiness?

A lot can be taken away from that, but let’s apply it in some aspects to web design. There is a misconception that you always need more, that your message is not obvious, your branding may not be clear, you need more content – more pages, more words. It is a trap that many can easily fall into if they are not careful.

The idea that less is more is potent in the online world where attention spans are notoriously short, and it is far too easy to click onto a new topic quickly. So the truth is, in many instances, less is the way to go on the web. It is all about converting people to customers, or fans, or interested readers – whatever the need is. Minimalism in your web presence can help you with this.

You need social media, you need content, you need a website, you need it all, but not everything has to be a book. Keeping messages short,c lear and concise across a vast online spectrum can be the key to a successful web presence – fight the urge to add more. Just make sure what you have is great.

A few months back I started looking to buy a new platform bed for my house. I was looking for a Japanese inspired platform bed that used raw elements that matched more of a craftsmen style. After weeks of searching and seeing many prices well over $3,000 for a bed that wasn’t exactly what I wanted, I decided to build my own.

Starting with 40 feet of 2″ stainless steel tubing, 24 feet of rough cut 2″ x 8″ cedar, and 32 feet of rough cut 1″ x 10″ cedar, I began the over whelming task of making a bed from scratch. A few beers and many pages of drawings later, I had my future bed completely diagramed with correct measurements to make the magic happen… or so I thought.

Some people like to learn from experience. In this case, I am definitely one of those people. The old saying measure twice, cut once really would have saved me some time. The very first measurement I took for my bed was off. This meant I spent two weeks building a stainless steel bed frame wrapped in cedar that was 12 inches too wide. Lucky for me, it was too wide, not too short. However, I had to cut the entire frame apart twice to fix the problem. By the end of the night, I was out of beer.

After three weeks of wood splinters, burned shirts from welding sparks, and lots of cussing, my bed was finished. The last thing I had to do was move it from the shop downtown to the house. How is it every time I start to move some heavy object, whether it be furniture, rocks or depleted uranium, my friends happen to have prior arrangements made by their significant other. Being that I’m stubborn as a mule I did what any good Egyptian would do and pulled out the PVC pipes. Using five PVC pipes, I rolled my bed headboard, weighing around 275 lbs, through my house and into the master bed room. Getting the headboard from the back of the truck, over the rock stairs ,and to the front door took a little more than Egyptian engineering. Using the finesse of an Eastern Sasquatch bred with a Norwegian Oger, I managed to take many years off my ever dissolving spine carrying the monstrous head board to the front door.

In the end, the custom built stainless steel and cedar platform bed was worth all the wood splinters, 2nd degree burns, back pain, and the endless amount of bad words that I am still doing hail Mary’s for.