A Showcase of Effective Minimalism in Web Design
Minimalism in web design is all about stripping things down to only the necessities – so there is nothing in the way of the content. You’ll find that minimal designs have a focus on typography, simple layouts, and a lack of fancy design elements. So what makes an effective minimal web design? Effective minimalism happens when a design gets out of the way of the content and still remains visually stunning. Here is a showcase of websites that are able to achieve this.
A Way Back
Corking Design
Maxvoltar
iA
Jack Cheng
A Working Library
Jaredigital
Creative Suitcase
Open
Snook.ca
LegiStyles
The Swish Life
Second and Park
Typejockeys
Great Works
The Creative District
BKWLD
Heartworker
We Are Hunted
Buckenmeyer & Co.
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27 comments
José Mota
November 27, 2009The Buckenmeyer & Co.’s website took my breath. Excellent typography and whitespace.
Stu Greenham
November 27, 2009Great post! I love Minimalist! Give my site a look see what you think
Rhonda Payne
November 27, 2009Minimalist? Try this for size: http://www.danpetter.net/
Danny Cassidy
November 27, 2009Great post, just goes to show that a well thought out grid and carefully considered typography goes a long way.
Design Informer
November 27, 2009Nice showcase, but it would be great if you can explain how each minimalism design is effective.
Daniel
November 27, 2009A nice selection I have just jumped on the minimal bandwagon! Fantastic for personal sites since they require little work and maintenance! Shame I’m never included on these lists though
Martin
November 27, 2009hm. i`m not so sure. all these websites of minimal website collections i visit don`t look really minimal to me…
what do you think?
Tyler
November 27, 2009Nice list, always love to look at others’ minimalistic designs. I’m always surprised to see how so little can go such a long way.
Recently jumped on the minimalistic bandwagon myself. I like to think the design works, but I made it, so of course I’d think that.
Taylor M.
November 27, 2009Thanks for posting, this is a nice list. Although I would say most of these are very well known sites that lots of people have seen. I do think Auxiliary Design’s site is a really nice minimal site.
toque
November 27, 2009ummm…these are minimalist…they’re just all white with nav at the top.
if anything this collection should be called Grid-based sites 101. very few of these are minimalist “by choice” but rather by structure.
this is a bad list of B- websites.
Tyler
November 28, 2009These are hardly B- websites. “A Working Library” for example I think is great.
I think when you say these are bad sites, you really are saying “Minimalist websites aren’t my cup of tea.”
But as far as the category goes, these are great examples to look at.
toque
November 27, 2009these aren’t minimalist….is what i meant to say.
JHAY
November 27, 2009Awesome showcase! Thanks
Alex
November 28, 2009http://www.minimalsites.com .. you are welcome
Matt M.
November 28, 2009This is probably one of the best recent compilations of minimalist design I’ve seen and it’s great! I actually modeled our company’s current website (http://www.forgeseo.com) off a variety of minimalist styles and we’ve gotten a lot of compliments on how navigating the site is extremely easy.
There are a lot of sites that are overdoing the web 2.0 style and it ends up killing usability and readability – minimalism is an optional alternative to this.
Alex Flueras
November 28, 2009Useful list, thanks for sharing. Here is another minimal, clean site: http://www.studiowber.com
Kai Chang
November 28, 2009Tumblr has some great minimalist themes available. One of my favorite Tumblr designers is this guy:
http://rinich.com/
Camucreative
November 28, 2009I wanna lick the ‘A way back’ website. Seems tasty.
Jordan Koschei
November 28, 2009Websites are particularly conducive for minimalism. You found a nice collection.
MiikkaV
November 28, 2009Actually I don’t think those all can be called minimalistic…
Qoska
November 28, 2009Always the same ones…..
Josh
November 29, 2009I like the “Corking Design” example you used. I traditionally think of minimalist designs as lighter designs, but this is a good example of a minimalist design that’s darker with a bit of grunginess. Automattic’s website is another example of a minimalist design: http://automattic.com/.
Anton Ranestam
November 29, 2009Minimalism in web design is the new “IT” if you ask me. It’s grown rather popular to build Minimalistic way.
Rahul - Web Guru
November 29, 2009Very good inspiration…
Rudi
November 30, 2009simple, cool, smooth, but still kickass
nice collection bru
Chris Robinson
December 3, 2009Great roundup, some really nice work
Sherman Hilcher
October 12, 2010It depends on the way you look at it and exactly where that you’re coming from on the topic really. In the long run beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but Now i am with you on this one.
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[...] a big one. Page content should also be easy to read and easy to skim through. There are plenty of showcases for minimalism to be found all around the web. These can be very helpful when looking for inspiration to get [...]