Minimal Universe

Minimal Universe collect posts from our favorite minimal-related blogs listed on the right.
  • Simplenote News - A major new version is coming!

    Simplenote News - A major new version is coming!:

    Simplenote has been growing fast. Over the months, we’ve received all kinds of great feedback. We processed this feedback, pondered it, prioritized it, and came up with 3 areas of focus for this version: reliability, organization, and sharing.

    Importantly, we’ve also put a lot of effort into preserving or improving Simplenote’s speed and elegance. Our number one piece of feedback is consistently this: please keep it fast and simple. So we did.

    This is great news for an app that I rely heavily on and use several times a day. Can’t wait to see what they have cooked up.

    For details on how I’m using it, my interview with Brett Kelly is the most detailed place.

  • Travel lighter by leaving your CD’s at home

    Travel lighter by leaving your CD’s at home

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  • simpledesks: My hotel desk away from home…two months in San...



    simpledesks:

    My hotel desk away from home…two months in San Francisco

    Submitted by Alex Duong.



  • Wire chair

    Tokyo based furniture designer Oki Sato designed this wonderful, thin and almost fragile wire chair. The wire chair is a follow up of the cord chair.

    The stainless steel legs have a diameter of 12mm and multiple layers of powder coating and hand polishing give the chair a lustrous finish. Due to this finish you can use the chair outdoors as well. Available in three different serene colors a perfect complement for your interior.

    Photography by Masayuki Hayashi.

    Wire chair
    Wire chair
    Wire chair

  • New Year. New Theme.

    It was somewhere early on in the design of the of the new Minimal Mac theme that I realized why designers as talented as John Rust must hate working with someone like me…

    I’m a minimalist.

    You see, I often am not sure about what I want. I am far more sure about what I don’t. Therefore, I will give someone like John a very general and nebulous idea of what I think I am looking for, they will go off and deliver exactly what I asked for, then I will say, “Wow. That’s great! Love it! Now, just change this, and this, and remove this, and move that, and make this tighter and…”

    Just like the logo, all I knew was that I wanted a modest change. Nothing drastic. Just an improvement and polish all around. I mean, frankly, the site has “minimal” in the title so there are only so many ways you can go, design wise. That said, “modest change” does not clearly communicate anything really. What separates designers like John (and Aaron for that matter) is that they listen to my indecision, misdirection and generality with patience and professionalism. They let me know when I am wrong without making me feel stupid. But, more then anything else, they deliver what I am thinking of far better then I can ever articulate it myself.

    John went above and beyond the call of duty in every way and even thought through and delivered things I had not even considered that made the overall experience for the reader that much better. For example, if you have an iPhone go ahead and load up the site in Mobile Safari. Seriously, do it now. I’ll wait… See that? Yep, John went and made a custom theme for the iPhone that blows away the default Tumblr iPhone theme. It retains the look and feel of the site while optimizing it for the iPhone. I did not ask for this, he just did it. Why? Because that is what great designers do, they think of the things you didn’t know you even wanted.

    Some other things to note about the new theme. It is designed to look great on the Mac, iPhone and iPad (the last one really sucked on the iPad). Also, the icon looks great on the iPad/iPhone home screen. Post pages now have descriptive page titles. This should make life much easier for users of Instapaper, Del.icio.us, Pinboard, etc. (Special thanks to Pat Dryburgh for his post on this). Also, I wanted the theme to be fresh. The site is well past the time it needed to grow up and stop using an off the shelf design.

    Finally, this theme is a custom theme made just for Minimal Mac. You will not find it in Tumblr’s Theme Garden. Please don’t copy it. I want a look and feel that is unique to this site. If you would like a custom theme of your own, I would urge you to get in touch with John. You will find few designers who can do an equivalent job as he, let alone better.

  • Applying the Unix Philosophy to everyday productivity

    Applying the Unix Philosophy to everyday productivity:

    Rule of Clarity

    “Code that is graceful and clear is less likely to break—and more likely to be instantly comprehended by the next person to have to change it. This is important, especially when that next person might be yourself some years down the road.”

  • Zen To Done App | Online Productivity Application

    Zen To Done App | Online Productivity Application:

    zenhabits:

    Open for beta testing, if you like to do that kinda thing.

    If you want to know more about ZTD check here.

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  • Fudoshin

    A spirit of unshakable calm and determination,

    courage without recklessness,

    rooted stability in both mental and physical realms.

    Like a willow tree,

    powerful roots deep in the ground

    and a soft, yielding resistance against

    the winds that blow through it.





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  • Original



    Original



  • "If people can’t figure out your user interface, perhaps it’s too crowded. Instead of adding more..."

    “If people can’t figure out your user interface, perhaps it’s too crowded. Instead of adding more explanatory text, try removing unneeded options, unnecessary buttons and information the user doesn’t need to see at that moment. The fewer things the user can do, the smaller the chance that he does something he doesn’t actually want to do. The less information the user sees, the smaller the chance that he looks at the wrong data, or misinterprets a piece of data.”

    - Lukas Mathis in Nobody reads your dialog boxes, a fantastic article. go read it.

  • "If people can’t figure out your user interface, perhaps it’s too crowded. Instead of adding more..."

    “If people can’t figure out your user interface, perhaps it’s too crowded. Instead of adding more explanatory text, try removing unneeded options, unnecessary buttons and information the user doesn’t need to see at that moment. The fewer things the user can do, the smaller the chance that he does something he doesn’t actually want to do. The less information the user sees, the smaller the chance that he looks at the wrong data, or misinterprets a piece of data.”

    - Lukas Mathis in Nobody reads your dialog boxes, a fantastic article. go read it.

  • Seishiro Endo Shihan - Saku Dojo Embukai 2009



    Seishiro Endo Shihan - Saku Dojo Embukai 2009



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