The Laws of Simplicityis John Maeda's site based on his book "The Laws of Simplicity" published in 2008.
I'm currently reading this book and am finding it to be a real gem of insight!
You should check out Maeda's speech at Ted also. I admire his ability to see the simple in the complex, but also see the beauty in both.
simply,
Tim
So what is thelifesimple?
This is a question that has been haunting me for years. What does it really mean to live a simple life? When I say I want a simpler life, what am I really looking for?
Charles Wagner, a writer in Paris in the late 1800’s asked the same question in his book: La Vie Simple. The book is now out of print but one of our thelifesimple.com team members, Greg Bunch, found a copy online and sent it to me. I’m not a big fan of reading online, so I found a copy at Abebooks.com translated in English (The Simple Life) in 1901 by Mary Louise Hendee. In a chapter entitled: The Essence of Simplicity, Mr. Wagner puts into words my shared frustration in explaining my own desires to live thelifesimple.
“I despair of ever describing simplicity in any worthy fashion. All the strength of the world and all its beauty, all true joy, everything that consoles, that feeds hope, or throws a ray of light along our dark paths, everything that makes us see across our poor lives a splendid goal and a boundless future, comes to us from people of simplicity, those have made another object of their desires than the passing satisfaction of selfishness and vanity, and have understood that the art of living is to know how to give one’s life.”
Herein lays the essence of thelifesimple: Simplicity of thought and speech, of pleasure and beauty and of needs and duty. I’d encourage you to pick up a copy of this book by Charles Wagner if you can find one; it’s a wonderful study on simplicity.
Pops, thelifesimple team
