“Oh, ya wanna hear my story?” Alfie takes a long drag from his pipe and stares into the campfire, his large amber eyes far away. “Okay. Welp. So, here’s the deal. My world, my Querth, was losing the Monster Wars, see? We were being overwhelmed with goblins and orcs and minotaurs and stirges… honestly, the stirges were the worst. Giant, bat-winged mosquitos? What the flip is up with that? What kind of idiot god came up with that terrible idea?”
Alfie pauses, taking a drink from a silver flask he produces from seemingly nowhere. Alfie’s skin is pale; chalky and ashen. He runs a trembling hand through his hair, which is an exclamation point of white standing up in shock from his scalp and refuses to lay flat. “So, what were we to do? All the dragons, draculas, dracoliches, and death knights got together and realized there were more of them than us gnomes and demi-gnomes (look, YOU can call them demi-humans, but to me they’re demi-GNOMES, you human-centric S-O-B) and that they could just wipe us off the map instead of getting hunted down in their caves and dungeons and keeps and whatnot. And it wasn’t just guys from the ‘D’ section of the manual, it was all them bastards. So, we were getting our butts kicked, right? So what else could we do? We made pacts with a bunch of Entities from Beyond. Fight fire with Hellfire, amiright?
“Well, it worked. We won the war. I guess. I mean, what we were left with after was a world where the gnomes and demi-gnomes had sold their souls and sanities to nightmare Old Gods from the Edge of Infinity that Mortal Minds Could Not Comprehend. It was pretty bad, I guess. Tentacles and eyeballs everywhere. And a surprising amount of butts. You think a gibbering mouther is frightening, wait until you encounter an undulating fleshy mass of gibbering butts…”
Alfie shudders, his tiny frame vibrating like a plucked ukulele string. “I guess Nietzsche was right when he said ‘Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.’ Who was Nietzsche? He was our C.O. Heckuvah guy… at least until he was polymorphed into a carrion crawler. Well, he was still pretty great after that. I mean, we never again had a problem with garbage building up inside our barracks, y’know?
“What’s that? Sure, I was in the war. Lt. Warlock First Class Knickerbocker, I was. My partner was Barry. Sargent Barry. He was a werebear infantryman. I’d ride him into combat, see? …No! Sheesh! Not like that! What are ya, twelve? We were a dang good team on the battlefield inseparable outside it. We partied hard at the local tavern, that’s for sure. Barry loved the ladies, y’know? The ladies where terrified of him, see, on account of him being mostly bear though, so it was mostly kind of sad.
“Have you met Barry? C’mon up to the fire, Barry. Don’t be shy.” A huge shadow lurches forward, led by two huge glowing yellows eyes and a razor sharp beak.
“Anyway, one day Barry here and I were on the front lines, and there was all this crazy chaos magic being tossed around and, long story short, Barry went and got himself turned into an owlbear. No, not a were-owlbear. Don’t be ridiculous! He’s already half-owl and half-bear. Don’t go throwing half-man in there too! Sheesh!”
Alfie shakes his little head and rolls his eyes in disgust. “Barry” lumbers into the firelight and shakes its furry/feathery owl head. Alfie throws it a strip of jerky which it gulps down with a disturbing 180° turn of its head and horrifying snap of its enormous beak. Barry rolls onto its back and offers its belly up for rubs, which Alfie obliges with vigorous scratches with both hands. “Barry’s always loved belly rubs.” He explains, matter-of-factly. Whether he means post- or pre-owlbear is uncertain.
“Well, Barry saved my bacon (and my personal well-being) more than once and I feel really bad about him being stuck in this owlbear form. So I’ve been travelling all the different Querths in the multiverse trying to find a cure.
“Yeah, we’re always looking for work, y’know? Do you have any idea how much it costs to keep Barry here fed? I mean, Barry still loves the ladies, but not quite the same way, know what I mean? Now it takes almost a full cow a week to keep him from eating them.
“Me? Oh yeah, I suppose my soul is still bound to Nugga-Thragath’Atchu, The Star-Worm That Devours All Sanity. Eh. Whatcha gon’ do?”
Alfie takes another sip from his flask and scratches abscently at one arm, which is covered in tattoos of an alien script that seem to squirm and coil around each other. You try not to look at them too long, lest your sanity slip away into the bottomless chasms of endless nothingness. “Anyway, that’s my tale… Hey, you gonna finish that sandwich?
The idea behind this project is to take an unpleasant thought that we all have and turn it around, dress it up in something fun, whimsical, or beautiful — thereby taking the power away from it.
I had a hard time with this one—making it look like I wanted. It’s still not quite right, but sometimes you gotta just let things go. Like the idea that you’re a bad person because you take joy in the simple things.
The idea behind this project is to take an unpleasant thought that we all have and turn it around, dress it up in something fun, whimsical, or beautiful — thereby taking the power away from it.
Mornings can be difficult. There are times, when we think about the day looming before us, that we’re filled with a deep sense of dread. By letting go of fear, we can try to see the challenges of the coming day as an adventure and an opportunity to grow and to live up to our dreams and potential.
The idea behind this project is to take an unpleasant thought that we all have and turn it around, dress it up in something fun, whimsical, or beautiful — thereby taking the power away from it.
Funny how often we’re absolutely certain that our fear will crash over us like a tidal wave and drown us, but then it turns out that wave wasn’t even ankle deep and that the ocean’s actually a really cool place to play.
The idea behind this project is to take an unpleasant thought that we all have and turn it around, dress it up in something fun, whimsical, or beautiful — thereby taking the power away from it.
Whenever we begin something new (a move, a career change, starting your own business, a creative project, learning something) and it’s difficult and not an instant success, we can often feel like we’ve wasted our time. But everything is cyclical, with ups and downs. As long as we’re open to learning from our experiences, all movement is upward movement.
The idea behind this project is to take an unpleasant thought that we all have and turn it around, dress it up in something fun, whimsical, or beautiful — thereby taking the power away from it.
Most of us feel, from time to time, that asking for help makes us incompetent or weak, even if we don’t actively feel that way—especially in our modern “bootstrap”, hyper-masculine society. But, here we are, little children, successfully floating in space, because we help each other.
“The more stuff in it, the busier the work of art, the worse it is. More is less. Less is more.”
— Ad Reinhardt, fine artist (1913 – 1967)
As the number of mobile users continues to boom, many brands are finding increased success with a more minimalistic design approach. Because such layouts are easier for the eye to scan, load quicker, and render with more fluidity on a wide range of displays — and within a limited amount of visual space — minimalism is becoming the latest trend in many online designs.
sample of a minimalist eNewsletter design
Minimalism is a long-established technique used by graphic designers, fine artists, architects, and industrial designers. The core philosophy behind minimalism is that by reducing a subject down to its core — stripping it down to its most necessary elements — we maximize point of view and create more visual and emotional clarity. And although it’s not a new idea, of late there’s been a major resurgence of its use, especially online. Major brands, such as Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and Google — long recognized for setting the standards for brand design — have been steadily paring their visuals down to the barest of bones. And they’re not alone, more and more brands are turning toward minimalism in their overall marketing — especially in regards to their online presence. We’re seeing the decline of heavy-handed, visually weighty layouts, laid thick with the skeuomorphism (illusionary texture and lighting effects) that was fashionable a few years ago. Layouts now features a cleaner, more metropolitan look that makes use of subtle gradients, judicious use of color, sharp edges, crisp font faces, and bold use of white space.
Because a minimalist design removes any extraneous clutter that can potentially distract or confuse a user, they can be moved to act with just a glance. And mobile users, in particular, can do so without having to wrestle with a non-responsive or slowly loading page. Users are less likely to abandon a page if they don’t have to sift through overwhelming and distracting visual input or do a lot of scrolling to find what they need. And they are more likely to act because call-to-action renders quickly and in plain view, on their mobile device.
sample of a minimalist donation page
There are other benefits to using a minimalist design, besides displaying well in both the mobile and desktop environments:
Minimalism helps to keep a brand consistent. In order for a brand to be taken seriously and recognized, it must remain uniform. When a user goes from an email to a landing page to a donation or checkout page, having thoroughly consistent design branding helps a user feel confident and makes a brand look more professional and, thus, taken more seriously.
Removing clutter lets core design elements shine. By stripping an online brand of anything that might be disorienting or extraneous, brand styling stays steady and stable in a perpetually fluid digital environment.
Unfortunately, many people think that minimalism must mean boring or shallow. This can certain be the case, but, if approached correctly, minimalism often creates some of the most beautiful, eloquent, and functional results. Think of minimalist design as a sort of Zen rock garden; peaceful and elegant, a harmonious place to reflect and relax the senses. And, in our increasingly busy and distracting lives, how could tranquility NOT be a beautiful thing, and powerful in its own right?
As mobile web use becomes more common, we are definitely going to see the trend toward minimalism grow and evolve. The growing need for web pages to be fully responsive to a wide variety of screen sizes, to cut through the clutter of the increasingly complex digital paradigm, and to inspire with potentially limited visual space will only continue encourage simpler, more tranquil, and more elegant designs.
Less is definitely more and less is definitely better in the current mobile-ready environment.
