minimalsites.com - Minimal Web Design Gallery and Minimalist Community

Just a general housekeeping note. I have shut down the ability to submit posts for the time being. It will be back at some future date.

The reason? There are now 600 post submissions still waiting for my review. I hope to go read each one and pull the trigger on either posting or deleting it. This choice will be based on a number of factors but mostly it will be based on where I feel the site is today and whether the content fits with that vision. As they say, it’s business and not personal.

That said, I’m very appreciative of all that have taken the time to submit a post. Many come in with kind words about this site and how it has inspired them. My feeble words are not enough to express my gratitude and humble thanks for this. To have inspired one person would have been reason enough for creating this. To have inspired so many… Well, like I said, no words.

Joanne Hudson Basics:

A friend pointed me to this website. They have very simple and stylish everyday objects.

Wabi Sabi is the Japanese philosophy that embraces a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble.

Author Leonard Koren explains it very simply: Pare down to the essence, but don’t remove the poetry. Keep things clean and unencumbered but don’t sterilize.

Koren continues:

“Greatness” exists in the inconspicuous and overlooked details. Wabi-sabi represents the exact opposite of the Western ideal of great beauty as something monumental, spectacular and enduring. Wabi-sabi is about the minor and the hidden, the tentative and the ephemeral: things so subtle and evanescent they are invisible to vulgar eyes.

And related to simplicity:

Simplicity is at the core of things wabi-sabi. The essence of wabi-sabi, as expressed in tea, is simplicity itself: fetch water, gather firewood, boil the water, prepare tea, and serve it to others.

Koren’s book Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers is a really good read.

O’Sensei. You can almost feel the Ki flowing.

Leg_in is a collection of desks and complements, which allows for a lot of compositions and finished for the office. It was designed by the acclaimed Spanish designer Francesc Rifé for Viccarbe, a Spanish contemporany furniture company.

Leg_in was designed back in 2004, and really set a trend back then: its particular leg form inspired many manufacturers.

I love how the clean and tidy style goes hand in hand with office functionality. Wouldn’t you want a desk like this at work?

Speed alpinist Ueli Steck breaking the record of the Grandes Jorasses north face in Chamonix 2008.

Going light and fast!