Notes on building a quiet website

Every few years I rebuild this site. The redesign is never really about the site — it's about whatever I've been thinking about that year, made visible. This year, the thinking was about restraint.

There is a particular kind of website I keep coming back to. Cream paper background. A serif large enough to feel like it means something. A single column wide enough to read without effort, narrow enough to feel like a letter rather than a billboard. No carousel. No animated gradient mesh. No cookie banner pretending to care about my privacy.

I think of these sites as quiet. They don't ask for much. They give the writing room.

The hardest part of building a quiet website is resisting the urge to add things. A second column. A search bar. A featured-post strip above the fold. Each addition makes sense in isolation; together they smother the page. Subtraction is the harder craft.

So this version is mostly subtraction. A serif (Newsreader, which I have grown to love). A warm background that doesn't strain the eyes at midnight. A side rail of icons because I am still vain enough to want navigation. And the writing, which is the whole point.

If you're reading this, thank you. That's the other thing about quiet websites — they assume someone is paying attention.