There are many new web design methods or techniques out there in the world today. Many designers choose a method, style, or technique and stick to it to master it and put their name on it.

However, others try to hop from trend to trend to keep up with the industries needs, which is indeed, a great idea for freelance designers. Minimalist design is becoming ever popular in the web design industry, and because of such, we discuss several key points that favor that designers should adapt to minimalistic design in order to keep up with the trending or evolving industry.

What is Minimalist Design?

Minimalist design is a new design style or technique that is based on the usage of web technologies and content. The minimalistic designing process involves less use of web technologies such as JavaScript and less use of images, icons, and the likes including the way the elements fit onto the grid or layout.

The point to it is to keep the design as simple yet as elegant as possible. For example, minimalistic design can include a great lightweight illustration that blends in with extensive whitespace with little use of JavaScript. Add a nice mixture of colors and well laid out content across the grid, and you come up with a great minimalistic design.

To grasp the idea of minimalistic design, have a look at the two sites below:

Dbushell

DBushell

Dbushell is a great example of the use of web technologies in minimalistic design. It has a nice lightweight header with a great illustration right below while utilizing the hierarchy method for the content and typography.

Ah-Studio

Ah-Studio

Ah Studio has an interesting touch with the way it utilizes minimalist design. While there may be a lot of scrolling to do to get through the content, it handles the illustrations and navigation quite well throughout. It is a great example to show you that minimalist design really has no borders to how lightweight it can actually be.

Now that you have a general idea of what minimalist design is all about, you can quite see that why many companies in a plethora of industries quite desire minimalistic designs for their websites, as they are lightweight but carry a lot of character to them.

The Wow Factor

Minimalist Design provides that wow factor to-many companies as these minimalistic designs are not only lightweight and simple to work with, but they often contain hidden treats waiting to be found. For example, many minimalistic designs out there in the world today scatter the usage of JavaScript, enough to satisfy our cravings but not too much to qualify as heavy use.

With that said, we are often found searching about these websites only to find some great JavaScript use in some features we never imagined to find. This not only increases the wow factor for viewers and clientele alike, but it also keeps them searching or hunting for more of these hidden treats to see what you have for them next.

Heavy Use of Creativity and Ingenuity

Due to minimalist design being so lightweight, it limits how much color, gradients, icons, and the likes you can use throughout the design or layout. However, because of this, it requires a lot of creativity and ingenuity that you would not otherwise put forward when designing fully-fledged websites.

This extra ingenuity or creativity that it requires allows you to expand on its borders or boundaries having you come up with new elements and factors to minimalist design, one of the delicious key features when using this style or method. Think of it as this, if I give you two blocks and two tools including a carving tool and tell you to build scale-sized cave like home, you really do not have all the materials or tools to do it.

However, because I only gave you these tools and materials, you have to use your imagination to become very creative to how you can use the tools with the materials to build the end result, and in the end, the output will generally be better than what you would have done if I gave you all the necessary tools, as you needed to be more creative on how you can reach or obtain the goal.

Many Companies Want It

As freelance designers, we find many small to large companies in search for designers to help redesign their websites. However, when we accept their job, we learn that their entire website is built upon only a few pages. Instead of heading the minimalist or minimalistic route, we decide to build a full-fledged site around these few pages.

Often, our designs are a definite overkill to what these companies offer online and these companies are generally pleased with the end result but not quite as great as they may have imagined their website to look. Therefore, when it comes down to a few pages, the best satisfying route would be to create minimalist or minimalistic designs as they are not only universal, but they are also great pieces that express the content well with great hidden treats between. Leaving these companies more than satisfied and pleased, of who will most definitely return to you for future design work.

To conclude, the minimalistic designing method or style is a great style to adapt to as its demand is constantly increasing as more and more companies and individuals find the need for them. Companies and small business often want websites but have no need for no more than a few pages on that website. Many designs and designers tend to stick to designing for content filled websites despite these sites only having a few pages.

Therefore, the end result is generally not as great is it should be. Moreover, by adapting to minimalistic design, you can maximize on your growth in the industry as well as always “over satisfying” your clientele by reaching or exceeding what they would have imagined their website to look like or be.

  • ReTox

    what a stupid article. no real content

  • http://ebenoit.com Eric

    “Minimalist design is a new design style”

    Are you serious?

  • http://www.fallingupmedia.com Falling Up Media

    Great article. I agree when you said how most designers design around an existing companies website and in most cases go overboard on a small site. I’ve done that in the past. Great article

  • http://www.olowuola.com Ola

    Really loved this article. Do you think my site “fits” the criteria?
    http://www.olowuola.com

    Cheers

  • http://michael.mior.ca Michael Mior

    Check out my minimalist design. Most of the criticism I’ve had so far that is it’s too boring, so perhaps I need to spice it up a little.

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  • http://digitaldawn.com.au Paul Millar

    I’m not convinced this is a new style as such – in fact I’d be tempted to say that the minimalistic design style is one of the oldest styles out there. That being said, this isn’t a bad article; so cheers.

    You should also probably note that one of the major benefits of minimalistic sites is that they are more usable and there is a huge push to get people making usbable websites at the moment :)

  • http://www.ogvidius.com/ Oggy

    I would consider a lot of the work I do to be minimalist (see my site) but I’m not sure designers should ‘adapt to minimalistic design’ just because it’s a trend. Personally I think it’s better to have a variety of styles. There’s loads of people doing minimal designs at the moment and if a client doesn’t want minimal he needs other people to go to who can specialise in the style they really want. It’s a well written post with some great points, though. Good job.

    @Michael Mior – I like your site, although a little spice would not go amiss! You could also make it more minimal, with more white space and perhaps smaller font size.

  • http://www.curtisscott.com Curtis Scott

    I agree with this article. Many companies are leaning more toward the simplistic look and feel.

    That being said, you should always use a style that works for the content you plan to display. Simplistic designs FAIL horribly on sites whose target audience are younger.

    Also, do you think my site falls into the simple category?

  • http://www.crearedesign.co.uk jay pick

    Some good points. However, I don’t think that minimalist design is a “new” style, it’s as you say; becoming more popular. I think that this is in part due to the technologies that are now available. For example, the use of jQuery tabs to ‘hide’ content until it is made visible by the user.

  • http://www.morphealth.com nisa sanjaya

    this is very good. but, what a fool articles.

  • nice

    Great article. I agree with the commenter though, as it is one of the oldest styles out there. Ola was just plugging his site, but to make it better: Make it fit on one page to get rid of that awful scrollbar, and to make it look less like resume format. Have a different portfolio page showcasing your top work to get rid of the loading time of all those images, or showcase like 3 front and center and more on portfolio page. Speaking of images make that text up top into real text. The text is also too mashed; make it into sentences. Also know that plugging your site like that will only help damage your reputation. Yahoo backlinks != a client.

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  • http://www.buzz-webdesign.co.uk Buzz

    I really like the dbushell site, a really good example of this kind of work… But as others have mentioned Minimalistic designs aren’t really a new thing. Thanks for posting.

  • Christie Bella

    Minimalistic design is certainly very trendy right now, but any & every good designer/artist knows that simplicity is always “in”, whether the rest of the public knows it or not (>w and too garish/tawdry. Find it & this delicate spot
    will give the viewer just enough to satisfy & appeal to them visually, but will also deny them just enough to stir up the tension & stimulate their desire for more- sound sexy? You’re damn right & it should be! The relationship between artist & viewer / entertainer & voyeur / creator & muse / and, if done correctly, even puppeteer & puppet- is everything- everything! The entire piece/design– an entanglement, or sensual dance of give/take > take/give (regardless, no doubt, of *what* is given/taken- whether good OR bad)–
    IS this interaction between artist & viewer.

    Simplicity in design- or minimalism- in every way & form, is always tasteful — it appears more expensive because it is always richer. . . and needs less to be so. Plato said so eloquently: “Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity.”

    If you find yourself needing to dress up elements with more gimmicky gunk, ask yourself if it is because that which you are trying to communicate is not strong enough to stand on it’s own, where it would simply *play* with design; utilizing it, only, as a visual tool with which to enhance & emphasize – rather than NEEDING design to distract or, worse, monopolize.
    It could also very well be that there is, conversely, TOO MUCH to say- your message is all over the place, having no clear directives, and, so, it has translated visually into a design that, similarly, doesn’t quite know what it wants to be or say.

    Less isn’t just more, but also more difficult! It’s not so easy to compose of that single, most elegant, most powerful-little-delicate-perfection, to carry the weight of the vast white space.

    —Christie Bella

  • Christie Bella

    Just to note- the very beginning paragraph of my above comment (an excerpt from one of my papers) will appear “jumbled” & won’t make sense, as if part of it is missing- that’s bc there is, just a small paragraph, missing- between the “(>w” –> and the words “and too garish/tawdry. . .” (as you can see, half of the poor (>w<) emote's face is missing! haha) –

    it was cut out I guess bc it was maybe too long(?) of a comment. . .or . something . I don't really feel like figuring out what happened to it though, just know that it was not done purposefully on my end :)

  • jonathan

    @Ola

    i think so, and if the user says thought says it :)
    i just think it has no focus, everything is blending, but on the background.

  • http://www,websitetemplates.bz EvaBrown

    Minimalist design is very interesting. I am webdesigner and I like creative works.

  • http://www.trevorsaint.com Trevor Saint

    I agree with minimal design in many respects. At the end of the day a minimal design will only enhance the impact of your creative work.

    This is perfect for a portfolio website in my opinion.

    In terms of applying creativity and something a little more exciting I guess this really depends on the project your’re working on.

  • http://www.webfosys.com/blog Alfred rich

    the above info is so helpful for my new blog..

  • http://www.veztekusa.com website development developer

    This is a nice idea- minimalistic design. Should work great for web developers looking for a change.

  • http://www.bannerperfect.com Multimedia Packages

    The basic concept seems true because sometimes using graphics and too many words may seem distracting and unprofessional. In certain cases it is needed to draw the attention of viewers towards certain concepts plus matters and by lowering the number of stuff used, some finer results could be gained.

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  • lita

    Clearly the article wasn’t written by a designer…

  • http://almubdi.com Mohammad Danish

    Hey this is a nice article but something wrong with the design=(

  • http://www.myfavouriteadverts.co.uk UKAdvertLover

    I do like the examples above, but I think that sometimes it is better to find a balance between being not too minimalist or too cluttered either.

    Many sites do seem to have too much going on and clearly nowadays there is more of a move towards a minimalist approach. But I think also this comes from people simply being more creative with their designs as well as people having more knowledge of how they want their site to look in the first place.

  • http://www.inappropriatesponsors.co.uk Random Blogger

    Some good designs here. I definitely prefer the minimalistic approach as opposed to cluttered!

  • http://pakdenanto.blogspot.com/ nantaPD

    Minimalis design is simple design less use of JavaScript and less use of images, icons. I like it….

  • http://sportsupplementsusa.com/ Linda

    I didn’t liked the design of ‘Ah-Studio’. Minimalistic doesn’t mean that the design can’t be attractive or good looking.

    Thanks
    Linda

  • http://www.solveit.coop Chris

    Not sure minimalistic design is a new trend as such but do think it is a useful approach to consider…I see a lot of sites which IMO overload the user’s eye.. sometimes less is definitely more…However, as I am also interested in SEO don’t pages have to contain a minimum amount of content (as in text) to be considered worthwhile by search engines?

  • http://www.espinteractivesolutions.com Interactive Solutions

    Why JavaScript is less use in Minimalist design?

  • http://www.koelstyle.com/th/7-%E0%B8%95%E0%B8%B8%E0%B9%8A%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%95%E0%B8%B2%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%A5%E0%B8%B0%E0%B8%AB%E0%B8%A1%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%99 ??????

    That’s very fastidious article. Thank a lots for talking almost it as I am interested in this individual.

  • http://www.balancecreative.co.uk andybalance

    We love minimalist design, clients want it in principal, but they need educating in how it works in the end product.