A Showcase of Effective Minimalism in Web Design

Inspiration By Henry Jones / November 27, 2009

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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.

Stu Greenham / November 27, 2009

Great post! I love Minimalist! Give my site a look see what you think 😀

Rhonda Payne / November 27, 2009

Minimalist? Try this for size: http://www.danpetter.net/

Danny Cassidy / November 27, 2009

Great post, just goes to show that a well thought out grid and carefully considered typography goes a long way.

Design Informer / November 27, 2009

Nice showcase, but it would be great if you can explain how each minimalism design is effective. 🙂

Daniel / November 27, 2009

A 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, 2009

hm. 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, 2009

Nice 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, 2009

Thanks 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, 2009

ummm…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, 2009

These 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.

Reply

toque / November 27, 2009

these aren’t minimalist….is what i meant to say.

JHAY / November 27, 2009

Awesome showcase! Thanks

Alex / November 28, 2009

http://www.minimalsites.com .. you are welcome 🙂

Matt M. / November 28, 2009

This 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, 2009

Useful list, thanks for sharing. Here is another minimal, clean site: http://www.studiowber.com

Kai Chang / November 28, 2009

Tumblr has some great minimalist themes available. One of my favorite Tumblr designers is this guy:

http://rinich.com/

Camucreative / November 28, 2009

I wanna lick the ‘A way back’ website. Seems tasty.

Jordan Koschei / November 28, 2009

Websites are particularly conducive for minimalism. You found a nice collection.

MiikkaV / November 28, 2009

Actually I don’t think those all can be called minimalistic…

Qoska / November 28, 2009

Always the same ones…..

Josh / November 29, 2009

I 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, 2009

Minimalism 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, 2009

Very good inspiration…

Rudi / November 30, 2009

simple, cool, smooth, but still kickass
nice collection bru

Chris Robinson / December 3, 2009

Great roundup, some really nice work

Sherman Hilcher / October 12, 2010

It 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.