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The trend of using minimalist designs has been with us for a while now. It seems like every day major design blogs publish a new gallery of great designs. But do minimalist designs actually mean anything to a designer? Can you become a better web designer by going the minimalist way or is it just a fad?

Actually, I do believe that it is a fad. But at the same time I also believe that you can learn a lot from it and use it to improve your skills significantly.

First of all, minimalist designs are here not without a reason. After the dark age of the ’90s (the dark age of web design, that is) came the year 2000 along with many Flash animations, fancy Photoshop graphics, and all kinds of other clutter. So finally after 20 years of noise a time of calm has come, bringing us this whole minimalism. People simply had enough off all the sites that were impossible to grasp and extremely user-unfriendly.

Minimalist designs change all that and provide a new, friendly environment. There’s nothing else on minimalist websites except for the things that absolutely need to be there. There’s no clutter and no confusion. And the sites are easy to grasp within the first 2 seconds of looking at them.

That is, of course, when done right.

So how can web designers use the trend of minimalism to improve their skills, and how to actually design a minimalist site properly?

Focus attention on the main element

Minimalist designs have very little elements incorporated into them. There’s simply no place for clutter or anything that is not essential to the site’s goal.

This forces designers to choose just one main element that will be the focal point of the whole site.

What can be such an element? It all depends on the site’s goals, but just to give you an example, let’s say that you’re designing a site for a new online service of some kind.

In such a case the main element would probably be the signup form. Consisting of a button, some screenshots, and short copy. You know that you can’t include too many things because the design is meant to be minimalist, so you only have place for the essentials. This will force you to think twice on what is really important for the site and what can be omitted.

Good designers are not the ones who can fill a whole site with stuff, but those who know how to select only the few important elements and forget about the rest.

Get those few elements right

Obviously, minimalist designs incorporate only a handful of elements to convey their message and convince visitors to take action (whatever action it might be).

This forces web designers to get those few elements just right. When working on a minimalist design you can devote more attention to each individual element. You also know that these elements need to be the best they possibly can. Because if they’re not then they’re going to stand out (in a bad way), as there will be nothing to cover them up.

Minimalist design is not about creating a site with just a few elements for the sake of it, but about using the smallest number of elements possible to reach a certain goal. Every element has its purpose in a minimalist design.

You know that you’re doing a good job if there are no more element you can remove without affecting the site’s ability to reach its goals.

Getting everything pixel perfect

This is a strictly graphics-related thing. Minimalist designs have to look exceptionally good. And in order to achieve this you have to make all elements pixel perfect (or at least try to).

Remember, there’s nothing to cover up this one elements that’s not so good looking. Everything needs to be nice or else your main element won’t be the one that’s the most visible … the ugly duckling will.

Crafting minimalist designs teaches you how to be pixel perfect. In fact, there’s no other way of creating a great minimalist design than by doing just that (whatever it might mean to you – there’s no one definition of “pixel perfection”).

Working on your typography

Typography is yet another element of minimalist designs, and probably one of the most important ones.

Since there’s not much to show on a minimalist website the text becomes an element on its own. That’s why choosing the right font, size and decoration is so crucial.

This is an area often neglected by many web designers. In some cases, Arial seems to be perfect for everything, but for minimalist designs it rarely is. Choosing the right font takes time and teaches you the basic rules of typography.

Every minimalist website needs to make a striking impression in terms of typography. If you just choose some random fonts the design won’t make much sense and the visitors will see this. Well, they probably won’t be able to name it, but they will notice.

Learning to use whitespace

Whitespace is one of those things that only the more experienced designers are not afraid to use. Many beginners feel that every piece of HTML real estate needs to be occupied by something, while it’s not the case at all.

When you’re creating a more complex design you get tempted to use every possible piece of space and fill it with that one more element. While it might work in some cases, it surely won’t work for minimalist designs.

Whitespace is yet another crucial element for minimalist designs. The sole fact that a minimalist design uses only a handful of elements forces us to space them out evenly on the site. They can’t just simply be placed all in one place.

The skill of using whitespace is somewhat volatile for web designers. Creating minimalist designs makes you simply better at using it, and this comes handy in every possible piece of design work imaginable.

Standing behind your opinion

In other words, believing that the work you’ve done is the absolute best you could do.

Here’s what I mean. If you’re a freelancer you might be reluctant about delivering a simple design. You might feel that your client won’t be so eager to pay if there are only a handful of elements on the website, and if the form is rather simplistic.

By sticking to minimalism you’re making your skin thick, and you’re learning how to stand behind your designs and be able to explain what their values are.

This is not a strictly design-centered skill, but it’s surely helpful in your freelance career.

Besides, once you learn how to explain the value of minimalist designs to your clients you’ll end up understanding them more yourself. So it’s a win-win scenario.

10 Minimalist examples

What follows is a set of 10 really nice minimalist designs for inspiration.

madebysofa.com

cargocollective.com/christopherose

fellswoop.com

madewithlove.be

thepokerclock.com

eutelnet.biz

soulwire.co.uk/hello

rodrigogalindez.com

theconsult.com

epidemialab.it

What do you think about the whole minimalist design fad? Do you think it’ll stick for more than a couple of years? What will follow?

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From the creators of BundleHunt.com and Noupe.com, a new design dialogue just launched today Dolody.com.

Dolody (@dolody) is a weekly design magazine that brings together the latest (and, yes, the greatest) tutorials, articles, freebies & webcasts on the topics of UX and UI design for the web and mobile worlds. Each issue is dedicated to a single wow-tastic topic that is sure to rock the socks off today’s leading designers, developers and agencies.

This week’s issue is about one specific topic: “What’s New and What’s Next”

“Welcome to the inaugural issue of Dolody! We’re pretty sure you’re gonna look back on this moment like that damn lucky Ed Sullivan Show audience looked back on seeing The Beatles’s first show. (Hey, we can dream, right?) So you know, every week, we’ll fill every square pixel of Dolody with articles on one design topic. For this issue, we’ve decided to put on “a really big shew” and share articles, apps and tools about ground-breaking design & UX trends and techniques. Enjoy! (PS: Catch that Ed Sullivan reference?)”

To celebrate the release of every issue a free premium design resource or Mac application is given away for free. This week you can download a FREE copy of “Professional Web Design” e-book Vol. 2. by SmashingMagazine. The book will be available for free for the next 7 days.

To participate, simply click on the download button you can see at the top right of Dolody’s homepage. For more information, visit Dolody.com. You can also follow them on Twitter and Facebook, or sign up for their newsletter.

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Last week we showcased a list with 21 Inspiring Examples of Dark Colors in Web Design, and this week, to show you a different approach on color choices, we decided to go for a list with examples of websites using mainly light colors on its designs. Color is indeed a really important element of web design, so nothing better than showing different approaches to keep you inspired.

La Piuma

Kipling

BdeB

Rainstar Boutique

The Work Cycle

Michela Chiucini

Inzeit

Stora Enso

Appex

Plus Plus

Neotokio

Guilherme Garcia

Dawid Wadach

Reserved

sénic

Nicola Cozzolino

ChurchMedia

Blind Barber

Salt Surf

one pause

Girl with a Camera

Source:

CSS Design Awards
The Best Designs
Awwwards

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Today is Friday, and what better way to celebrate than by presenting you with something new. ZeroBundle.com is a website that offers an awesome free bundle of goodies for designers. It is brought to you by WebDesignerDepot and MightyDeals.com. The bundle will be available for a limited time so speed up and download your goodies while you have time.

From UI elements, to forms, and PSD files to icons, you will get a lot of free stuff in their bundle. Make sure to visit ZeroBundle.com to check out all the goodies you can get. Have a good Friday!

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Here at WDL, we take great pride in being able to find useful freebies and share them with our readers. It saves you time, and allows you to focus on creating, instead of hunting. Here you will find 23 free textures to add to your resource library. Remember that textures can always add a nice touch to a website or other design project when used properly.

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This week, for our WDL Premium members, we have a PSD file from WeGraphics that contains a collection of shape layers that can be edited and reused as various charts and information graphics. With this file you will be able to create stylish vintage looking infographics, check it out.

Be sure to check out WeGraphics for more high-quality design resources, like vectors, brushes, textures, icons, and more.

Here’s a preview of the kit:

Download Vintage Inspired Infographics

About this Partner

WeGraphics is the definitive solution for designers who need high-quality resources but don’t want to be obliged to spend hundreds of dollars for them.

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Centering your attention throughout the workday can be a difficult process. You need to truly love your work and cherish the time you spend. Unfortunately not all of us can feel this way 100% of the time.

Freelancers are often given tasks related to concepts they care nothing about. In this regard there isn’t much compassion to put into your work. So how do you keep yourself motivated and on-task? I’ve put together just a few ideas which you may try to follow throughout the day. The sooner you complete work the easier it is to move onto the next task. Keep your mind in-check and always pay attention to what you’re focusing on!

Take Infrequent Breaks

To start off with this suggestion seems like I’m advocating slacking off. But honestly breaking from your work every so often is possibly the most important choice you could make.

It’s simply not healthy to stare at a monitor for 5-7 hours in a row. This is especially true if you’re churning out monotonous work in graphics design software or a programming IDE. Even a 5-10 minute period of stretching and walking around will give your mind some clarity. You’ll feel a lot more level-headed sitting down again and tackling projects.

Some people require more frequent breaks than others. I cannot truly offer a distinct set amount of time, so just feel it out for yourself. I like to break every 60-90 minutes after completing a large chunk of work. This gives me plenty of motivation when sitting down again to hit the next task on my list.

Work in Smaller Intervals

The best way to kill motivation is to start over-analyzing each of your daily tasks. If you spend 20 minutes going over what needs to get done you’ll feel majorly overwhelmed. A tasks list is only handy when it can be accomplished in bite-sized chunks.

The best advice here is to jump right into it! Don’t waste any time in the morning except to glance over your to-dos. Start with the important stuff and just bang it out as efficiently as possible. I also recommend waiting to check off tasks until a later time in the day. It takes away focus to move back-and-forth between your to-do list and real actual work.

Follow the End Game

Ultimately your motivation can stem from the reasons behind why you’re working. If your current project is for a paycheck then use that energy. Everybody needs to get paid to make a living!

It can be a bit more difficult with high-priority projects as stress is an added factor. Keep cool and follow through with smaller tasks one at a time. Whether freelancing or working on a personal project all designers will hit a wall sooner or later. However don’t let this creative block discourage you.

I use this time as an extra break session from the workday. I’ll go and throw on TV or call to chat with a friend or colleague. The only time I would force through the work is creating on deadlines – which at the end of the day is about money.

Find your own end game within each project and use this as the ultimate source of motivation. What is your bottom-line finishing point? And how quickly can you get to this point without too much struggle? Ask yourself these questions before taking on a project so you have an idea of how much work may be required.

Kill Over-Analysis

Another huge deal-breaker to losing motivation is over analyzing too much. When you try to perfect each work it takes a lot longer to achieve any results. This can be fruitful when you have a lot of compassion towards a project idea.

But you can’t expect perfection out of every artistic work you create. And this is especially true when you need to design for a living. Not all freelance projects can wait for your stroke of creative genius to kick in as unfortunate deadlines loom. Try to put aside ego and just get the work done. You’ll feel a lot better having something to look at rather than a blank slate.

This also gives the illusion of accomplishment even if you feel the work is sub-par. It’s generally much easier to go back and correct work you’ve already made than to build something entirely new from scratch. Take this lesson to heart and you will not have trouble cranking out loads of successful projects.

Get Plenty of Sleep!

In a similar domain as taking frequent breaks you need sleep to function properly. I can’t think of a single designer or web developer who has felt good running on barely any sleep.

Now I’m certainly in favor of pulling an all-nighter every so often as necessary. When you have projects piled up to the ceiling it can feel beneficial to work all the way into the wee hours of the morning. But this isn’t a strategy you can incorporate into your “normal” weekly schedule. Get to bed at a decent time and start working on projects earlier – this should give you a bit of extra time in the afternoon to build on your own ideas.

Conclusion

Motivation is key to the success of any business model. You’ll need to dedicate yourself to getting work done and moving forward even just a tiny bit each day. Luckily with so many handy web tools it’s never been easier to jump-start a new project.

But it is still a difficult scenario trying to force out creative work. When you can’t flow with creativity you often have to resort to mindful tactics of tricking yourself into motivation. This can be invigorated through money, connections, branding, promotion, or a dozen other self-rewards. Stay true to yourself and never lose sight of the end goal. Life seems to always have a way of working itself out perfectly.

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We all know that color is a key aspect of web design, and here at WDL we like to show you how designers are using colors in their projects. We’ve already showcased lists showing colorful websites and sites using white, so today, to keep you inspired around colors and how to use them, we decided to gather a few examples of websites using dark colors.

Nicola Potts

Cantiere delle Marche

Luhsetea

Ascension Latorre

Dataveyes

CJS

Edoardo Leo

The Autumn’s Rain

Scandalous Dirt

mideast tunes

Soup.

Pioneer Steez

Azure Stoneworks

Under the Psycamore

Hello Cihan

OmagOma

Angelo Studio

Trippo

Tombras

Marco Pizzichemi

Josh Sullivan

Source:

The Best Designs
CSS Design Awards
Awwwards

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Icons are a very important element of web design and play a big role in a website. Designing the perfect icon is definitely a challenge and is always good to have resources and tips in this matter. Today we decided to gather a few Icon Design Tutorials to keep your ideas flowing and to increase your resource library. From new and fresh tutorials to a little bit older but still classic ones, you will find a lot of tips and inspiration in this list, enjoy.

Create a Mobile App Icon in Photoshop

Design a Detailed Audio Receiver Icon in Photoshop

Create a Detailed Camera Icon in Photoshop

How To Draw a Vintage Polaroid Camera Icon

Create an Electrical Outlet Icon in Photoshop

How to Create an Envelope Icon in Photoshop

Create an Apple Safari Icon in Photoshop

Create a Mac Style Home Icon in Photoshop

How to Draw a Shopping Bag Icon in Photoshop

How To Create a Vibrant Cloud Icon in Photoshop

Design a Sleek Google+ Icon

Create a Cardboard Box Icon in Photoshop

Carbon Fibre Style Metallic Icon Design

Learn To Create A Glowing Google Plus Icon/Illustration

Stylish Metallic Button in Photoshop

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Photo manipulations are quite popular among all generations of designers and digital artists. It is also a genre often used in the advertising industry because of the effect these manipulations have on people. This sort of artwork are usually shocking and unrealistic and they are demanding of people’s attention and reactions either negative or positive. That’s the purpose of advertising – to make people feel something about the brand or particular product.

In this post you will see 30 funny and amusing photo manipulations with different messages and stories behind.

Head in aquarium

Statue of Labour

Milka

Only the strong survive

This is how it should be

Grown Up

Mas Pelas

Perrier

Sensei

Inflatable man

Conforama

DDB

Calle 13

Brekkies

Decathlon

Mohawk

Big head in the hole

Tas

Happy

Delvico

Iberia

Bakery

Mountain Rider Foundation

Sailing

Ford Fusion

Compact Fluorescent Miracle

EDF

Real human skin

Big Ben

Perrier