There is a particular kind of website that you remember. It loaded without a fight. It asked nothing of you. It let you read.
Most of the web is in a hurry. Pages race to interrupt - a banner, a modal, a request to subscribe before you've read a single sentence. The slow web does the opposite. It assumes you came to read, and it gets out of the way.
What restraint buys you
Every element you remove is one less thing between the reader and the words. Restraint isn't austerity - it's confidence that the writing can carry the page.
“Space isn't empty. It's the part of the page doing the quiet work.”
So we kept this page plain on purpose. One column. Generous margins. Type chosen for reading, not for show. If you made it this far, the experiment worked.
Mara Ellison·
