This image is not just a circle. It also happens to be the best logo designed. Ever. This blue circle is the logo for the Los Angeles punk band the Germs, and it is alarmingly simple.
What’s so important about being alarmingly simple?
Everything.
Online Clock began its life as the world’s most popular Online Alarm Clock back in early 2006, as can be seen in the various archived versions of our site on Archive.org.
Back then, having a website devoted entirely to being an alarm clock you use in your web browser was a new idea and it was pretty darned unusual.
I remember having the idea while I couldn’t sleep. When the idea came to me, I knew it was a good one immediately: I literally stood up out of bed, went into the kitchen to find a scrap of paper, and then wrote the idea down so I wouldn’t forget about it the next day. But this was unnecessary: the idea was the first thing I thought of when waking up the next morning.
Here we are, almost three years later, and the internet is suddenly exploding with different kinds of alarm clock websites.
And I see over and over again that the first big mistake that developers make when putting any kind of website online is: filling it up with too much junk.
Just because you can add five thousand different options and features to a website doesn’t mean you should.
Quite the opposite.
It’s better to leave everything out that’s not absolutely necessary.
The world is too complicated as it is. What constitutes real beauty these days is SIMPLICITY.
But there are two posts I’ve read recently which make this point far more eloquently than I can:
- Mashable: Why Less is More and How to Unlock the Web
- 37 Signals: Why the Drudge Report is One of the Best Designed Sites on the Web
OK, 37 Signals argues that the Drudge Report is kind of messy, but to me, it’s a very stripped-down, minimal site, and that’s a good thing.
The people who put OnlineClock.net online are big fans of these sites, and sites similar to them:
- Drudge Report (politics aside)
- SamSpade.org (the old version)
- NowDoThis.com (great new site)
- EditPad.org (anyone else use this?)
So what’s my point here?
As we go into 2009, the web would benefit from a trend towards minimalism.
Websites should do one thing and do it well, and then get out of your face.
Make it alarmingly simple.
Or keep it offline.