Minimalist Web Design

Less is more? Minimalism has been an influential creative movement for nearly forty years now. First popularized in home furnishing, then spread to things like clothes, home appliances, album covers and web design. Used correctly it provides an almost blank canvas for the most striking elements of a page to really stand out and make a statement.

A minimalist design is a basic looking site, devoid of superfluous colors, graphics, images and textures. It makes the content stand out and draws your attention to the content, or message of the site. Even though they are simple sites to behold, they are often the most difficult to create.

Many internet users are stupid. Yes I know, they are our clients, our bread and butter, and the people who keep us in business, but they are. They are easily confused, easily lost and often get completely thrown by the slightest bending of rules. That’s why we have the unofficial web standards, to stop people confusing their heads about stuff.

A minimalist design takes this into account, but doesn’t hobble the website in the process. We can design a simple, straightforward website, with cutting edge elements without fear of people getting lost or missing the point. It is the ultimate design and accessibility combination.

To achieve a minimalist design, we must first come up with a draft, then strip it of everything but the most basic requirements. Then we take a single design element and incorporate that into the page. The balance is to keep everything you need to keep the site on message, but cut out everything else.

Keep the design as bare as possible, but reserve a strong element that can act as a focal point for the page. It will have to be strong enough to hold its own but not have too much color, texture or shape to take over the page.

Minimalism includes a lot of whitespace as a result of the design philosophy. It is an integral part of the style and the page should incorporate as much as possible. The trick is to make the page as blank as possible without being boring, and conveying the message it needs to convey. This is why minimalist design is one of the harder techniques to master.

Minimalism comes in many forms, yet when we see it, it’s often in the same guises each time. Black and white sites are a little overdone, and any new one will have to be very well designed to stand out from the crowd. Single color sites with white writing are another well used minimalist design, that will again, have to offer something new in order for it to work.

The other benefit of minimalism apart from making the message stand out is that it is often timeless. Web trends are fickle and change all the time, these kinds of designs age much slower, and will stay in vogue much longer than a standard design.