#015 -
Is my site minimalist enough?
Since the start of this website I've taken more of an "indie web" approach to its design than "small web" or "old web". Not that they are opposed or mutually exclusve, but there are some subtle differences regarding where their main focus is.
- Old Web emphasizes the "retro" design, the gifs, the weird graphics, a lot of color. Like many, if not most, of the websites in NeoCities.
- Small Web emphazises simplicity. One of their goals is to make websites and platforms that can run on old devices, are fast, easy to create and maintain and focuses much more on the content than the form.
- Indie Web focuses on independence from Big Tech and the corporate Internet, descentralization and as personal expression that includes not just dumping your "content" on a controlled platform, but on crafting your own platform, both the form and the content, but is less opinionated design-wise.
Of course, anyone of those styles has elements of the others and in the end, what does it matter who identifies with what? This is just me overthinking things a little because it's fun.
I just revamped all the website, I redisigned the structure, now it is more compartmentalized into neat little sections, with a cath-all bucket I named the Hotchpotch [update: that section has since been deprecated] and I also simplified and unified the design a little and added these cute little icons for the sections (Yes, I used AI to make them, sue me. I'm not against AI per se, it's tool, that's a whole other topic I want to write about at some point). But recently I've been wandering a lot on the Indie/Small/Old web, or the Free Web, for short, and I've taken an appreciation for the "Small" web a little more. Also I ran into the No CSS Club's page and couldn't help thinking, am I being minimalist enough?
Minimalism has never really been my top priority but a means to an end, though I do like a "simple" design and I despise bloat in websites. Another thing I learned from looking at those extremely simple sites is that they are ironically the most "responsive" since all they have to render is text. But secretly I kinda fear that I can't really pull it off like my buddy ZkBro's page.
But I now don't know, maybe I'll give it a try. Not to the extreme of making it a NoCSS site, but maybe move little more in that direction in the next revamp.
Update: I found this other site and wanted to share it as another really good example of minimalism. I actually found it in the links on the No CSS Club site, and I was mildly impressed, it shows that not using CSS doesn't mean that it has to be completely devoid o formatting.