Medium as Frozen Pizza

Compelling piece by Matthew Butterick on the business and design of Medium.

On Medium’s use of minimalism:

As a fan of min­i­mal­ism, how­ever, I think that term is mis­ap­plied here. Min­i­mal­ism doesn’t fore­close ei­ther ex­pres­sive breadth or con­cep­tual depth. On the con­trary, the min­i­mal­ist pro­gram—as it ini­tially emerged in fine art of the 20th cen­tury—has been about di­vert­ing the viewer’s at­ten­tion from overt signs of au­thor­ship to the deeper pu­rity of the ingredients.

He continues:

Still, I wouldn’t say that Medium’s ho­mo­ge­neous de­sign is bad ex ante. Among web-pub­lish­ing tools, I see Medium as the equiv­a­lent of a frozen pizza: not as whole­some as a meal you could make your­self, but for those with­out the time or mo­ti­va­tion to cook, a po­ten­tially bet­ter op­tion than just eat­ing peanut but­ter straight from the jar.

The piece is less about typography and more about Medium’s business motivations, but the entire article is worth your time.