No. 31 “Less is more.”

cut anything that isn’t helping.

Every extra badge, banner & button fights for the same few seconds of attention.

Take things away until the one thing that matters is impossible to miss.

Remove one thing. Did anyone miss it?

It first shows up in Robert Browning’s 1855 poem “Andrea del Sarto,” about a painter.

Mies van der Rohe made it modernism’s motto. He said he first heard it in Peter Behrens’s office.

In 1966, Robert Venturi shot back: “Less is a bore.”

• Robert Browning, “Andrea del Sarto” (1855)
• Maxon, “What did Mies van der Rohe mean by less is more?”
• Wikipedia, “Ludwig Mies van der Rohe” (Venturi, 1966)

Save this for the next time someone asks for one more banner.