Less Is Still More

Version 7.0 of this site—which I named "Lena"—was built on one conviction: go back to what actually works. Design and content as the only two forces, nothing else filling the gaps. The section experiments that had accumulated over previous versions got stripped. What remained was leaner, quieter, more honest.

I’d been using lyrics from the brilliant green—my favorite band at the time, a Japanese trio with an entirely English-language catalog—as textural elements running through the layout. A strange choice that somehow made complete sense to me. Words you’ve already given emotional weight, repurposed as atmosphere.

Every redesign of a personal site comes with a little manifesto, and this one was mine: less is sometimes genuinely more, especially once you’re building something that should look like it means what it says.