37signals

I’ve been meaning to make this post for some time, and their new book, Rework, has eliminated any excuse not to. 37signals is, according to Wikipedia, “a web design company with a self-described focus on usability, simplicity, and clarity in design and writing.”

Both of their books, Getting Real (available for free online) and Rework are essential reads if you are looking for a lean, simple approach to business and design. Some choice passages from Rework:

Underdo your competition. Conventional wisdom says that to beat your competitors, you need to one-up them. If they have four features, you need five (or fifteen, or twenty-five). If they’re spending $20,000, you need to spend $30,000. If they have fifty employees, you need a hundred.
This sort of one-upping, Cold War mentality is a dead end. When you get suckered into an arms race, you wind up in a never-ending battle that costs you massive amounts of money, time, and drive. And it forces you to constantly be on the defensive, too. Defensive companies can’t think ahead; they can only think behind. They don’t lead; they follow.
So what do you do instead? Do less than your competitors to beat them. Solve the simple problems and leave the hairy, difficult, nasty problems to the competition. Instead of one-upping, try one-downing. Instead of outdoing, try underdoing.
[…] Don’t shy away from the fact that your product or service does less. Highlight it. Be proud of it. Sell it as aggressively as competitors sell their extensive feature lists.

I love this philosophy, also from Rework:

There’s a beauty to imperfection. This is the essence of the Japanese principle of wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi values character and uniqueness over a shiny facade. It teaches that cracks and scratches in things should be embraced. It’s also about simplicity. You strip things down and then use what you have. Leonard Koren, author of a book on wabi-sabi, gives this advise: Pare down to the essence, but don’t remove the poetry. Keep things clean and unencumbered but don’t sterilize.*

And of course this gem from Getting Real:

As things progress, don’t be afraid to resist bloat. The temptation will be to scale up. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Just because something gets older and more mature, doesn’t mean it needs to get more complicated.
You don’t have to become an outer space pen that writes upside down. Sometimes it’s ok to just be a pencil. You don’t need to be a swiss-army knife. You can just be a screwdriver.

(Which may or may not have sparked the idea for the name of this blog).

37signals company blog, Signal vs. Noise, is also worth following. And lastly, if you are not the reading type, here is a video of Jason Fried, one of the founders of 37signals, going over the essentials of the company’s ‘less is more’ philosophy: