Paul Rand (one of my heroes):

“Perception—how we see something—is always conditioned by what we are looking for, and why. In this way we are always faced with questions of value. A turbine must be “scientifically” designed in order to operate, but to design it at all was at one time a matter of decision. Such decisions mayor may not be based on needs, but they are surely based on wants. Products do not have to be beautifully designed. Things can be made and marketed without our considering their aesthetic aspects, ads can convince without pleasing or heightening the spectator’s visual awareness. But should they? The world of business could, at least for a while, function without benefit of art—but should it? I think not, if only for the simple reason that the world would be a poorer place if it did.”

I’m really enjoying being back on a self-hosted WordPress powered blog.

Sure, having upgrades and bandwidth issues taken care of behind-the-scenes is nice, but there’s nothing like plowing through a sidebars.php file or questioning what you really want in a header or footer file.

Plus, I love Coda and Textmate and MarsEdit, which are the primary tools I use to sculpt out this digital David (it’s a work in progress).

One of the toughest parts of finding WordPress (or blog in general) nirvana, of course, is nailing the right theme. To be honest, I can’t stand busy themes (or classrooms or office spaces). My design ethic is definitely minimalistic.

However, finding that perfect minimalistic blog is so challenging. I’ve been toying with the ultra-thin “mnmlist” theme here. It does what I want a theme to do; focus the reader on the content and allow for the reader to formulate their own experience with the text rather than be constrained by an experience I am attempting to thrust upon them with chicklets, images and heat-map derived colors.

I’m going to give this theme and this experiment a try.

There will be a little tweaking here and there as I break in these new shoes, but feel free to let me know your thoughts (sam@samharrelson.com or Twitter work fine).