How I Did The Responsive Redesign Of ArtWeb.com In An Afternoon

Tokyo Is Not Expensive

The Good Life On Less Than $2000USD A Month

You probably have this idea that Tokyo is a super expensive place to live or visit. Having lived here for most of the last 10 years, I beg to differ.

I’m the co-founder of the popular blog Tokyo Cheapo, so as you’d expect I’m a fan boy for minimalism, living within one’s means and the Mr Money Mustache way. However Tokyo is not expensive, at least not like London, Paris or San Francisco. I’m living the good life without even trying that hard to scrimp and save.

I suppose I’m more of a “Money Beard.”

Life In The Centre Of Tokyo

I live 15 minutes walk from the centre of Shibuya, i.e. “that busy intersection in Lost In Translation”. Here I am standing, well headstanding there:

My ~$760USD/month 25m² apartment is compact but modern, comfortable, has a (tiny) balcony and a great view of the city.

I Eat Good Food.

I like to shop for organic and local vegetables. I drink the coconut oil cool aid. I even buy “expensive” food stuffs like nuts, berries and cheese. In short, I don’t try to save on grocery shopping, yet I still struggle to spend much more than $200USD/month.

I do a lot of cooking at home, but I still take my girlfriend out for dinner quite a few times a month. And you’d be a fool not to in Tokyo when you can eat amazing fresh sushi for less than $10USD/head.

Coffee Is My Office Rent

I’m my own boss, and one of the reasons for this is I hate sitting in an office.

I get most of my work done in one of the now numerous good coffee shops in central Tokyo. On average a good caffè macchiato costs me around 400yen ($3.30USD), and many cafés have high tables or counter seating so I can do my “standing desk thing.”

Squat Racks, Pensioners And Saunas

I used to use the Tokyo community gyms which typically charge around 300yen (about $3.50USD) per session. They are quite a fun experience, usually a mix of polite pensioners, students and fellow cheapo foreigners.

Since I like to exercise pretty much every day and the community gyms don’t usually open till 9am, I decided to upgrade and join Golds Gym. I now pay 9,700yen ($81USD)/month for the deluxe experience, complete with kick boxing pads, kettle bells, numerous squat racks and The Sauna.

I Cycle Everywhere.

Living in central Tokyo means I can get to most places in less than half an hour on my hipster single gear bike. As you’d expect, the Japanese drivers are courteous and polite, there’s no road rage, waving guns in your face etc here. I feel very safe and the roads are pretty clear for the most part, since most people use public transport.

This means I spend next to nothing on public transport.

I Don’t Pay To Get Into Clubs

Night clubs, all night partying, cinemas and sausages are expensive in Tokyo.

But Tokyo is a city of free events and entertainment. Traditional festivals, museums, arts, street performers, not to mention the mountains a mere 620yen (~$5USD) train ride away.

No Phone, No Life?

Phone contracts are lengthy and pricey in Japan, typically 2 year commitment at $100/month. The work-around is to get a pay monthly data-only plan. I’m paying less than 2000yen ($20USD)/month for my LTE data SIM card plan.

If you really need an incoming phone number, you can a use a VOIP or Skype number. There’s good LTE coverage all over Tokyo now — I don’t give a second thought to calling someone in Europe from Skype on my phone whilst wandering the streets, like some kind of vagrant executive hobo.

My Other Running Costs Are Low

One of the upsides with living in a shoebox sized apartment, is the bills are shoebox sized too. Even with the recent electricity rate hike (as Japan switched fossil fuel since most nuclear reactors are offline), my bills are still a pittance.

The national health insurance scheme is pretty cheap, and payments vary with your income. So if you’re on low income your payments are low. I’m not even that poor (for Japanese standards) and I’m paying well under $100/month.

Fancy 3D Graph Of My Monthly Living Costs

I‘ve been keeping a log of my expenses every day, and here’s a graph of the last 30 days (USD):

And in a table (both USD and JPY):

How Does Tokyo Compare To Other Cities?

In the last five years, I’ve also lived for up to a year in several other cities — London, Berlin and Ho Chi Minh City. Here’s how my average monthly living cost compares between them all:

London: $2700 Tokyo: $1675 Berlin: $1500 Ho Chi Minh City: $1400

Tips For Cheap Tokyo Living

Live in one of the cheaper central areas (here’s a handy map for finding them), the increase in rental prices is more than offset by the decrease in transport costs and improvements in your social life.

Beware of contracts — phone, internet, gyms etc make sure you read the small print and don’t get locked in to something you can’t cancel for two years.

Eat at Japanese eateries — sushi, soba, ramen, tempura, you just can’t get great Japanese food this cheap anywhere else in the world.

Don’t buy a car — keeping a car in Tokyo isn’t cheap. Use the public transport like everyone else or better, cycle. If you must have a car, try one of the car sharing schemes.

Learn Japanese — a lot of the bargains become apparent when you can actually read/understand them.

For 99% of websites, design needn’t take more than an afternoon.

I’m lazy. Too lazy even to look for a designer.

So I gave myself the afternoon to come up with a new responsive look for ArtWeb.com.

Here’s how I did it:

First Step — Narrow Down the Choices and Satisfice
“This will do, this will be the new look ArtWeb.com.”

I knew in advance I’d like to use the bootstrap HTML + CSS framework, and ArtWeb.com is essentially a gallery of products (art), so that helped me narrow down the number of possible templates dramatically to “bootstrap e-commerce HTML template”.

Given the paradox of choice arising from the bazillion HTML templates/themes on the internets, narrowing down the choice is precisely what you want to do.

Next, you (probably) don’t want to spend ages agonising over making the best choice. Instead. practice satisficing — just choose the first one that meets your criteria of “good enough”.

And so I clicked on the first mostly white and clean design I saw, and after about 5 minutes of thought I decided, “This will do, this will be the new look ArtWeb.com.”

Second Step — Browser Butchery
I was able to explore what the new template would have looked like without spending even a single dollar.

Most modern browsers allow one to directly edit the HTML and CSS of the current page. Using this trick I was able to change menu items, swap images and perform various tweaks of the template I like, before I even committed to purchasing it.

I then took screenshots of the various pages I’d butchered in browser and shared them with the UX team.

I was able to explore what the new template would have looked like without spending even a single dollar (not that I was that bothered about saving the $14 license cost of the template).

Step Three — Load Up Asana With Tasks

I then simply took the same screenshots I’d given to UX and attached them to Asana tasks for the various different views we’d need our dev team to code into new look.

For each task I added a few notes in addition to the screenshot/layout. Overall, I was able to assign the bulk of the tasks in little more than an hour.

Moreover, I didn’t need to specify everything in the layouts because the template came with sensible defaults (fonts sizes, spacing etc), and some additional details we’re easily explained with text instructions alone.

Step Four — …

Coding the design however took somewhat more than an afternoon, but that’s a rather long and boring Medium post. 🙂

Step Five—Profit

The bulk of coming up with the design, UX and layout for the new ArtWeb.com took an afternoon. There was some dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s afterwards, but the broad strokes were finished within a couple of shots of espresso.

Conclusions

99% of websites can skip design.
There’s a template for pretty much every type of website, from a bespoke system like ArtWeb to cat websites.

Users (mostly) don’t give a shit about your site’s design, so you shouldn’t either. No need to waste time quibbling on font sets, button colours and “identity” — leave that to the VC-fueled startup branding teams to bicker late in to the night. For the rest of us, finding a template that looks good and matches our needs is 90% of the work done.

If you don’t have an eye for UX or design, then hire someone who does for a few hours and get them to choose a shortlist of templates.

Speaking of templates
Speaking of which, if you’re an artist and you need a website then try ArtWeb.com. We host over 20 thousand artist websites all running smoothly on our easy to use artist’s website builder.

Note: The e-commerce template we used is called Minimal, available here.

Go green.

Go pink.

Go out.

Go to loud places.

Go silent, go concrete.

Go up.

Go dark.

Go to penis festival.

TokyoWhispers

In the Garden,

A Royal treat:

Dragonflies & helicopters,

Spiders & police…

Fenced by Stone & steel,

Herbs for all times:

Past & present,

A Perfect Now,

Cicada concerto!

StateOfTokyo.com it’s here!

It has been a while since this project started to boil in my head. It has taken a while for me too to clear my own mind about what I really wanted to do. Mainly because, I thought, it is hard to do something new and original in a world where photography is everywhere and instantly consumed.

But no matter how many times I thought about it, I could not stop thinking about this. I needed to do it. It’s not for the money, it’s not for fame (what’s that?), it’s because the world is inspiring and full of art. And it’s not just the world, it’s the humans that inspire me. Every single of us has a story to tell, has a hidden expression to share, a universe within our minds.

And this is the reason why I am starting this project called State of Tokyo. This is more about the people and less about the city, but it is about both. It is also about you. About people that inspire and about the people that I know. About friends, and strangers, grandpas, colleagues and people I still have to meet. I want to capture and share what inspires me so it can inspire you too.

It’s a humble blog, with a bit of a spartan design that no doubt can be improved, but at the end it’s about the names and about the people who are on each post.

If you are based in Tokyo and know someone that inspires you, or a store that amazes you, or a little bar or a business that you think it’s unique and deserves to be know, please let me know. I will do my best to try to photograph that special person or place.

I will be waiting for your email here: [email protected]/* */

Julia was born and raised in Germany. One day she decided she wanted to live her own life, quit her job, cut all ties and moved to Japan about 5 years ago. She didn’t plan much, just had the feeling it was the right time, and went for it. Since then she’s been following her instincts and living her own life. Julia doesn’t like to think too much about things and the future, learning from the good and bad things from the past she became the way she is now, a kind and joyful spirit. She enjoys travelling around the places she hasn’t been yet in Japan, and loves nature. As you will see from the photo shoot, loves to change herself constantly on the way she looks and dresses, or new designs for her tattoos.

We got in touch through Instagram; I thought her style was really original so I dropped her a message asking if she would like to do some collaboration. The result was great! There was good synergy and we shot the 3 different styles we discussed and improvised in the same location. The first one, a colourful and natural style; the second, a dark and vampiresque look with a slight steampunk influence; and the third, a white and blond look with some ballet influences on a slightly dystopian background.

Photography Alex Abian

Make up and Stylism: Julia Shibata

Model: Julia Shibata

Translation: Seiya Watanabe

Feel free to contact Julia for collaborations or bookings by email here.
日本語

ドイツ生まれ育ちのユリア。自分自身を生きようと、仕事を辞め、これまで生きてきた世界を離れ、来日したのが約５年前のこと。物事や将来について理屈で考えるのが好きではない。自身の経験やその価値観から生まれる直感が道標となり、彼女の「今」を創っているのだろう。趣味は旅行と、自然に向き合うこと。身体に付与する装飾やタテゥーに常に変化を求め、新しい自分になりたいと思う気持ちを大切にしているそうだ。

彼女の独創的なスタイルに惹かれ、インスタグラムで声をかけたのが今回の撮影のきっかけとなった。今回は「色彩と自然」、「スチームパンク調のヴァンパイアと闇」そして「ディストピアとバレエの融合」をテーマに、３つの異なるパターンで彼女を表現してもらうことにした。

ユリアへの撮影協力・タイアップ等に関するお問い合わせはこちら。