In Inspiration Jan 11, 201020

Excellent Showcase of Minimalist Website Designs

Minimalist design can be somewhat difficult to understand at first, (even for the more seasoned designer) and hard to master. A minimalist website contains subtle, simple yet elegant elements that aren’t visually overwhelming and can distract a visitor from the main focus of the site. In art, minimalism refers to the awareness of fundamental qualities that attract a certain type of attention opposite from the norm.

Less is More, and the following examples you are about to see, prove this to be exact. Elements of design in a website that displays minimalistic entities serve multiple functions, not just one. This reduces the use of various un-needed elements and incorporates more of a “2 in 1” approach.

Below we have an Excellent Showcase of 40 Minimalist Website Designs that will serve as inspiration for your next minimalistic project. Please feel free to comment if we’ve missed any.

Trent Walton

Trent’s website is simple, attractive, and straightforward. The homepage is the latest article published, and when you visit the Articles link, every post is displayed in a large image that becomes faded when hovered over. The site contains very little sidebars and allows visitors enough breathing space, meaning nothing seems crowded.

The simplicity of the contact page is sophisticated and professional at the same time. This is an overall good example of a successful minimalistic design.

Helvetic Brands

Helvetic Brands has a website defined by its sections. Icons instead of images and screenshots are used to display a link for more work, and the content found on the site is nicely spread out. The design and use of subtle colors is easy on the eyes which makes it a swift to find what you need.

Miller Type Foundry

Simplicity, great usability, and a clean grid is what makes the Miller Type Foundry site a beautiful example. The most noticeable aspect of this design is the focus placed on the fonts (the main subject) within the Typefaces page. Every font is well aligned and contains a page of its own with a simple navigation at the top right-hand corner.

Typographic Desk Reference

The TDR site contains a one page layout. The content is well organized and perhaps the most obvious element of all would be the images lined up for visitors to use a quick preview. Every position of the image that pops up shifts towards the opposite direction. In other words, all of the images that pop up are “pulled” to the center. There is a good balance between visual and typographical representation.

31Three

31Three uses more imagery rather than text to grab a visitors attention. The site isn’t hammered with useless text, and it only demands that the user read when absolutely necessary. The site is set out to house the Portfolio of Jesse Bennett, and that’s exactly what it does. The portfolio area divides each project with a large screenshot, and site title paired along with a testimony on the left-hand side.

Nick Robinson

Nick Robinson’s site is a one-page design that contains a short intro and quickly tries to shift your attention to his projects. The site seems to have been designed on a small grid-system, and it puts JavaScript to good use.

Kyle Sollenberger

This site has more of a text based approach to its homepage, and has a simple 3 link menu. Five sections define the site as follows: the menu, short introduction, latest project feature, services offered and testimonials, and a quick search for projects using tags.

Astheria

Astheria is the simplest, most organized content-focused blog I’ve come across. The entire blog is geared towards minimal design and usability. The site is powered by WordPress and displays an unorthodox theme containing large easy to read headlines.

Pixelbot Webdesign

Pixelbot has a clearly defined navigation menu, prominent and consistent display of work, as well as different subtle colors for every page. Content is nicely laid out and separated into an aligned section.

On

On features a minimal design showcasing previous and latest projects in a large jQuery slider. The projects are properly aligned in the portfolio section, and they don’t look messy at all. The blog section reflects the overall simple design of the site, and uses simple widget bars with text links for navigating through latest tweets, categories, and archives.

Typejockeys

Typejockey’s site puts aligned elements to work for the best. This site is structured through a grid system and it displays beautiful navigation, every menu link is a different type or style. The main focus, typography, is the first thing you notice as you enter the site. The shopping experience and cart is simplified, you don’t feel overcrowded and pressured.

80/20 Studio

The 80/20 website is defined by a clean well organized one-page layout. Every section provides just enough details for you to move on to the next. You’re not plastered with over-the-top content and distracting elements of design.

Matt Bango

Matt has a beautiful layout nestled with more links than anything, which allow you to navigate all throughout the site. The portfolio area is tabbed for every type of work, all the projects are nicely spaced out and do not overlap each other.

idsgn

The idesn blog was designed for a large visual representation of the content. The featured post is placed at the top of the home-page with a large image and the rest of the posts trickle down as they are aligned and shown in their corresponding locations.

Klipp og Lim

This is a beautiful website that divides every section with a thick (I’d say 8pt) line that makes it easier to view the different elements and features. The portfolio area is almost like an image gallery, every project has a title and description all aligned to the left while the image is centered.

Berit Somme

Berit’s website is pretty minimal, as it displays the latest project dead-center of the layout and when you click on the link for more projects (either in the Boker or Generelt section), projects are showcased as if they were in a slider, but in reality a different page loads for every project.

Monk

As you can see, the monk website wastes no time in aligning its every image and making it easy for you to scroll through. This is a one-page layout that has no menu bar or links and is divided into 3 sections, the introduction, the showcased work, and the contact/more information area.

FindMeByIP

FindMeByIP uses stunning typography, beautiful colors, and a menu bar that doesn’t move as you scroll down through the different sections. For the most part, all of the elements are properly aligned and each given enough room apart from one another to keep your attention where they want it to be.

Lemon Oak

Lemon Oak is one of the simplest informational sites I’ve come across. The content is divided up evenly and gets straight to the point. There isn’t a need for a contact page or are, there’s just a contact icon at the footer of the site.

Sveinn Davidsson

Here the portfolio serves its purpose as the homepage, and every project perfectly aligned contains a different color as you hover over it. All the explanations for projects, and links to other work, as well as text on the about page is located on the right-hand side. The site pretty much utilizes the same layout throughout all of its pages excluding the home page.

Emptees

Emptees has a simple layout, nothing complicated, and displays its designs beautifully. For the most part, every element is aligned with each other, and the site as very easy to use and find navigation.

Poccuo

Excellent design with minimal qualities such as well spaced out menu bar. Cleanly dividing every seciton, elements within the sections, and menu is a plus for this site.

Nathan Carnes

Nathan Carnes has an elegant site with a set width and height that yells out minimalism as the front page is more than straight-forward and contains easily readable content.

Huge

The Huge site takes shelter in a well organized design and grat display of content. The site makes it easy for you to scan through with your eyes and the headings with a thick weight towards the bottom allows you to quickly find the information you need.

Jesse Dodds

Great use of colors of course, however, minimalism is beyond the use of correspondent colors but rather the details of how the elements are structured. Jesse has the most important links and information nicely aligned on all counts, the header, thumbnail, and text-based description within the home page.

Awesome Note

This is a nice iPhone application website that conveys simplicity and readability throughout the entire layout. The entire site is mostly structured by large images as examples, and some have a link for further info.

Mick Fanning

Mick Fanning’s website is themed professional and displays a large image slider in the center of the layout. The informational sections beneath the slider are beautifully aligned and use two different types of fonts that define the section title and content title.

GeeksPhone

Amazing site with stunning type and cleanly defined widgets in use. The menu bar, featured product, social widgets and footer are nicely divided amongst the layout.

Creative Online Media

This is a stunning website with effective use of whitespace. Its simple design makes it easy for you to read and navigate to where you need to go. Elements of design are large enough that they can’t be missed, and the footer is well organized.

Joe McDonald

This is a one-page site that took the challenge of knowing how to properly spread out and distribute the content throughout the layout for more visibility. This is something that is sometimes hard to achieve on a dark background. The structure of the site is fairly simple, and I must say it’s pretty hard to get lost here.

Kyle Steed

Kyles website uses images and Grey sections to separate the content. The sites elements titled Life, Design, and Faith are aligned at the top and the width, however, height wise, every section’s different and is dependent on how long the content may be.

Kim Burgess

Kim has a typographical based minimal site focused more on informing and connecting you with the proper links. The entire layout is divided within 3 sections, the logo, introduction (utilizing JS to unfold further text) and the footer that contains a line of icons that help you connect with Kim.

Ned

This site is simplicity at its best. The left sidebar contains the necessary links to display the projects to the right of that area, and even though there is no specific alignment within the elements they are well divided.

Susie McConnell

Susie’s personal website houses left and right aligned content. The site has a set width and sections are separated with a thick bold line for a more organized view.

BrandNew

The BrandNew blog divides the main content from the sidebar with a different color. Section titles are displayed with aligned icons and cap letters. The posts seem nicely laid out and maintain format.

Second And Park

This site focuses on well spaced out elements of design and great use of typography. Professionalism is kept throughout the entire layout, and I’d have to say the most noticeable aspect of the design would have to be the well organized contact area.

Martin Kristiansen

As you may know, defining specific elements within a dark background can be hard to achieve without the proper layout, use of colors, and type. Martin’s site fulfills these very requirements and manages to simplify the way the content is displayed at the same time.

Adlucent

Adlucent’s website is nicely aligned first at the section title followed by every sections conent. It’s hard to loose focus of the section you’re at since the alignment and distribution of content varies for each.

Anebstar Macht Webseiten

This isn’t the most complex site of all, but it’s definitely one of the simplest layouts we’ve seen so far. Forget hard to read content and unorganized display of projects, this site manages to demand attention from the start, and succeeds in engaging the user to visually interact.

Design Woop

Design Woop’s site is well designed and manages to divide the sites featured and main content with the use of highlighted type for the titles. Although the logo takes up a large portion of the sites front page, it makes way for the menu bar and the section for latest tweets along with the RSS subscribe button to all be aligned nicely with the rest of the sites content.

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