Fluffy news piece in the Metro today about companies tapping into 'ancestral wisdom', using Chinese Feng Shui and the Indian philosophy of Vaastu (or Vastu) Shastra to design better websites. 

Vaastu is an ancient Indian science of architecture that seeks to create harmony between nature's five elements - earth, fire, water, air and space - man and objects. This creates a setting that paves the way for "enhanced health, wealth, prosperity and happiness".

Dr Smita Narang has written a book on the subject, Web Vaastu, which explains how companies can balance their websites. "Earth is the layout, fire is the colour, air is the HTML, space is name of the web site, and water is the font and graphics," says Narang. The trick, Narayan says, is to remove items on your web site that serve no purpose, and keep the things that serve you well.

To summarise: Remove the clutter. This isn't an earth-shattering new concept.

I'm not a designer, nor a Feng Shui expert. (OK, I may have spent an afternoon placing bowls of gold coins, and hanging crystals around my house, once, but that doesn't make me an expert! Merely bored.) So I'm reserving my judgement on this one.

If you think changing your fonts will improve the flow of ch'i, more power to you. Here's another site that focuses on Feng Shui in web design.

If you're of a more skeptical mindset, perhaps the people behind this watchdog site do us a public service by naming and shaming ugly web design of 2005. Of course, the thoughts represented here are not those of the company... yada yada yada. But here's a thought, perhaps those responsible should read Dr Narang's book?

And if you're a web designer that has used vaastu and/or feng shui, what did you think? Surely pop-ups are bad karma!