Over the last five years or so, I’ve come to fully appreciate minimalism in web design; after all, clients are on your site for the content, not the design. Likewise an art gallery doesn’t display it’s pieces against a cluttered background, but rather in a frame selected for that particular work, in a setting appropriate for viewing. Photographers generally display their work against a solid background, or surrounded by a large mat for the same reason.
They do this to allow the subtleties, the nuance of the work, to show and not become drowned out by surrounding distractions. This principal holds true in art, architecture, music, dance, and yes… web design.
minimalism
Minimalism in web design is a fairly basic design concept:
- Less is more: focused, direct content
- Less is more: minimal use of color
- Less is more: extensive use of white space
When dealing in a less is more context, every detail counts – and it’s these details that make or break a layout or design. Hence typography plays an enormous role in minimalist design, as does the subtle and proper use of balance, color, and position.
subtlety
While it may be a lost art in advertising and pop culture, it’s alive and well in disciplines such as information architecture and interface design. General web design seems to fall somewhere in the middle, perhaps even further segmented by the designers intended audience. While hopefully a passing fad, many sites are simple static psd to html conversions – and while they look nice, the content is constrained by the layout and the two are inexorably intertwined. And while the graphic artist may or may not have been excellent, the concept is forever frozen in a static layout. While there’s nothing wrong with a tables-based slice and diced psd website, these are generally obtained at the very low end of the price spectrum by students or freelance developers.
There is an almost complete lack of subtlety in these sites, and they’ve become so prevalent that they overshadow those that do. We’ve become so accustom to the busyness of the majority of what’s out there that our first impression of a minimalist site might be that it’s boring.
