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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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The basic idea of minimalism that less is more can also be applied to your workstation, and the result is really inspiring. Clean, minimal and beautiful stations with exactly those things you need to work, nothing more, nothing less. The spaces are simple: desks, a nice chair, your computer and something to give the space a nice personality, it’s all about keeping the space clean, really inspiring.

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Our minimalism tag is filled with eye candy images to help you get inspired remembering that old and wise premise “less is more.” To add content to our tag and to keep showing you good examples of minimal designs that work we decided to show some posters designed by Pedro Vidotto. Pedro is a Graphic Designer and Art Director originally from Brazil who is currently based in London. His background is in Advertising and he has five years of experience working in the industry. Here you will be able to see that quality is better than quantity in design.

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As we mentioned in our last showcase of minimal web designs back in May, minimal layouts are the new black and we are glad about that cause this way we can show you more and more new and inspiring minimal websites. Today we decided to gather a new list of fresh minimal websites to inspire our readers, so enjoy it and remember, less is more.

Pure – Minimal WordPress theme

Assembly

deladee

us design studio

Hocus Focus

vnsaga

Touchtech

Aker Brydge

Nizo

Vonrosen

weltunit

Daily – Dustin Heerkens

Studio Antwork

François Deladerrière

Grain & Gram

Andfold Studio

Ryan Todd

Chance Graham

Infinise

Headlamp

Fox Johnston

Source:

The Best Designs
Minimal Sites

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I believe that we can agree that minimal and clean websites are the new black. Every day people seem to be embracing more and more the idea of less is more. So we decided to gather a new list of minimal and clean websites to show you how designers are showcasing minimalism on websites. And here you will also see some use of color, showing that minimal does not mean colorless.

Craft – WordPress Portfolio Theme

Plastical

Girlfriend

Bestwork

Stephon Vernon Clarke

Snagly

Saville’s

EEHarbor

Adore You

Barnt & Arnst

Jon Montenegro

Holger Huber

Lundgren+Lindqvist

Louise O’Reilly

Ahrens

Atlason

Marlon Medau

iPhone-icon

Jeremy Gleave

Core

Logartis 2011

Corpus

P.A.P.

Unfold

Tinkering Monkey

Source:

The Best Designs
siteInspire

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During 2010 we showcased 4 lists of minimalist and clean websites to inspire you! We started with A Showcase of Clean White Web Designs (January), then we had 55 Minimal Black and White Web Designs (April), 60 Minimal and Super Clean Web Designs (May) and 40 Fresh Examples of Minimal Web Design (October). Since we know that there’s always something new to see surrounding this style, we decided to start 2011 with a list of clean and minimal websites to inspire you. We believe this is the perfect way to start a new year.

Makr Carry Goods

8020 Studio

Shape

Claire Coullon

Republic2

Image Mechanics

The Noble Union

AKQA

SouthSouthWest

Mario Hugo

Kin Design

Atomized

Appreciate It

ReprintMe

Black Box Press

Brandon Taelor

James Pedrazzini

The Dept

Arlo Vance

Woods Creative

Pentagon

Bags of Joy

D’Arcy Jones

SVPPLY

Identity Designed

When it Drops

Hobson Dungog

freshness

Marco Devincenzis

mnmly

twothirty

Ally Creative

cmjnrvb.net

Rakel81 – Portfolio de Thomas Bouyges

Chambers Judd

Source:

Minimal Sites
siiimple
siteInspire

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There is nothing more inspiring than a clean and minimal website. A design with few elements representing something. The saying “less is more”, even though somewhat cliche, couldn’t be more true. We already published here a A Showcase of Clean White Web Designs and a list with 60 Minimal and Super Clean Web Designs to Inspire You. Since minimal sites are always around and they are actually pretty trendy right now, we decided to gather a new list. Enjoy.

Works of WeLoveNoise

Isotope 221

Stuart Hobday

hauser lacour

Hinterland Studio

byLouise

Artypapers

New Simplicity

37signals

BX22

here design

Alexander Munk

Omnia

Our Beautiful Game

Julia Schaefers

propeople

Design Woop

The Art of Metropia

Lonely Tweet

Indie Labs

CouchCreative

Vitor Lourenço

The NewMode

eCoverSuiteElite

tictoc

Wearable Print

Grow Interactive

Rodrigo Corral

Staydecent

VonChurch

Carsten Prenger

Rhythm

Rob Treutel

The Divisions

Design Influence

thinkmore

Royale

David Gill

Mankind Creative

Mainstudio

Sources:

Minimal Sites
unmatchedstyle

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There are so many techniques when it comes to web design, it’s hard to get a full grasp on all of them. Minimalism is one of the few which stand out from the crowd in a seemingly ubiquitous flow. The trend follows the concept of keeping things simple and easy to work with.

Removing clutter from pages helps users focus their attention on the things that really matter. Page content, images, contact information, and the presentation hierarchy that removes gradients and web 2.0 distractions. Check out a few of the ideas below in regards to minimalistic designs and see how you can incorporate these into your own projects.

How Does Minimalism Work?

The idea of minimalism in designs is not a new one. In fact, it’s been present in the art community for centuries. With the move into digital design we find things to be a bit different as the objects we’re designing are constantly changing.

Minimalism works by playing on your visitors keen attention, or rather lack thereof. Most visitors who visit your blog or website will not spend more than a few seconds on the page, maybe a few minutes if you’re lucky. This isn’t because they truly don’t care or hold apathetic viewpoints towards your content. Rather in our world of fast-paced action users know how easy it is to jump from one website to the next in almost an instant.

Playing on these pieces to your users attention span by placing content is easy to read layouts is the basis behind which minimalistic designs are built. You will frequently see much more typography and white space with fewer images and buttons as distractions.

Although there isn’t any guidebook for running minimalistic designs there are plenty of guidelines to follow. Additional white space is one such idea, along with the removal of unnecessary page elements.

Less is More – Adding Space for Readability

Designs where “less is more” often don’t turn out too good. Most commonly you’ll see designs like this running blank white pages with black text and a logo – not exactly the most exciting website around.

When grasping the concept of minimalism you have to understand how white space ties into your content. All that additional padding and space where there isn’t anything to look at – that’s called white space. It gives the reader’s eyes a break from so much content and helps them skim through text a lot easier.

A good way to envision this is to consider a common textbook, maybe one from your favorite History course in high school. Generally these will contain large blocks of text with images and diagrams placed every so often. These are good examples of layouts with almost no white space (and they’re pretty hard to read, go figure).

One of my favorite blogs is written by Fred Wilson at http://www.avc.com/. His design is one such example of utilizing white space to enhance the appearance of text on a page. Although I wouldn’t label his blog theme as entirely minimalistic it does hold attributes of proper padding and white space, all key properties of minimalistic designs.

Elements of Simplistic Typography

Digital text is truly the most important aspect of any website. Unless you’re running a video or photo-viewing application the reason you have visitors to your page is to read content, so that content had better be presentable.

From a minimalists view of things content should be the main focus. This means all of these flashy newsletter signup boxes and live Twitter feeds are just distractions from what visitors really want. These elements aren’t totally bad or should be thrown out the window. They just don’t hold a place in true designs based on the concepts minimalism.

The two main elements when it comes to typography are headers and paragraph text. They both require plenty of white spacing as mentioned above, but they also need to stand out to your readers. Adding margins to your headers will visually separate them from the rest of your text. Contextually you may consider adding different properties to your headers such as italics, underlines, resizing or recoloring, too.

Paragraphs will generally stand out on their own as large blocks of text. You can make them easier to read by increasing font size and adding more space between lines (known as line-height). Keep your font colors much darker than your background but not so dark they contain deep contrast and hurt your eyes when skimming. Mess around with color choices to find the perfect in-between before moving on.

Keep your Layouts Unique

The truly exciting principle which keeps minimalism alive and thriving is how unique layouts can be. When all you (as the designer) have to worry about is context you are free to move things around at will. No longer are you stuck to a rut of 2 or 3 column layouts. You can break out of the mundane and really show off some creativity!

This doesn’t imply you can just throw elements together and come out with a beautiful design; far from it. We can consider as an example the portfolio of Berit Somme, an illustrator based out of Norway. His design boasts a powerful header and footer area with central content containing his digital works on display. All of the basic webpage elements are still there in one form or another, but it’s how they are applied in a creative way that truly makes the design.

When looking back on these styles there are only a few things to consider. Ensuring your goals have been met is 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 started.

It’s a truly diverse world out there as the field of web design advances into the future. Consider the ideals of a minimalistic viewpoint when starting your next web design, even if you don’t plan to go all-out. Many of the concepts held within minimalism can be applied to all website projects to relieve clutter and clarify the purpose of your design.

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WordPress has become one of the top choices for content management systems among website owners. This has happened for several reasons, but one is the readily available collection of themes that can transform the appearance and functionality of a site. There are all kinds of themes out there, but some of my favorites are the ones that take a minimalistic approach so the content can do the talking. If you’ve been on the lookout for some nice minimal WordPress themes, then you’re in luck. Here are 10 free ones that you should find useful.

Un.complicated

The Standard

Lifestreaming White

Clear

The Daily Grind

Blue Bubble

Minimal Press

Foliogrid

Clean Home

Vostok

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A few months ago we posted a collection of icon sets for minimal style web design. It was quite the challenge finding high-quality icons of this style, but I was able to find some gems and the effort was greatly appreciated by our readers. Since several months have passed, I decided to scour the internet again for new sets and ones I may have missed the last go around. You’ll be pleased to see that I was able to find 15 Must Have Minimalist Icons Sets. These icons are perfect for designs that are focused on content and typography.

Default Icon

Goo-EE Icon Set

bwpx.icns

Munich

Sanscons

Wireframe Toolbar Icons

Eclipse 2

PICOL

Dortmund

UIDesign Icons

Symbol Signs

Mnml Icon Set

Only2 Icons (92 icons in set)

Devine Icons 2

Devine Icons