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Understanding Minimalist Typography

At its core, minimalist typography embraces simplicity. It drops unnecessary decorations, focusing on visual appeal and functional design that boosts readability. Sans-serif typefaces, appreciated for their clean lines and generous white space, are a frequent choice in minimalist typography. This focus on functionality and elegance ensures the design’s core message and content shines through, unhindered and dominant.

Now, let’s take a closer look at our top 10 minimalist font recommendations.

Roboto

Roboto, a font you’ve likely encountered on the web or in apps, combines mechanical and geometric forms. Its 12 distinct styles make it a versatile choice for an array of minimalist designs, from website headers to the UIs of mobile applications. Its universal appeal and wide language support make Roboto a popular choice for digital design.

Open Sans

Open Sans, another ubiquitous font, stands out with upright stress and open forms, conveying a friendly yet neutral demeanor. Its extensive character set enhances readability at small sizes, cementing its status as a reliable choice for body text in minimalist designs.

Lato

Lato, with semi-rounded details in its letters, communicates warmth without losing its professional essence. The font family’s ten styles offer designers flexibility to meet various design needs, from commanding headlines to nuanced captions.

Montserrat

Inspired by the geometric sans-serif style, Montserrat offers modern, clean character designs. With 18 styles, from thin to black, it caters to a broad spectrum of minimalist designs, be it unobtrusive body text or bold headlines.

Raleway

Raleway’s elegance and sophistication are accentuated by its distinctive ‘w’ and ‘k’ characters, adding visual interest without compromising readability. With nine weights, this font is especially well-suited for headers and large text in minimalist designs.

Arimo

Designed by Steve Matteson, Arimo is a breath of fresh air with its crisp sans-serif design. It stands out with enhanced on-screen readability characteristics, making it an excellent choice for cross-platform document portability.

Poppins

With its geometric sans-serif design, Poppins exudes a clean, modern aesthetic. Its balanced letterforms, available in nine weights, support high readability at both large and small sizes, making it a versatile addition to any minimalist design toolkit.

Oswald

By reinterpreting the classic gothic type style for the digital age, Oswald’s condensed letterforms create a versatile typeface. Offering six weights, Oswald lends itself to a variety of minimalist design applications, from dense body text to airy headers.

Fira Sans

Designed for Mozilla, Fira Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface. It boasts excellent readability across sizes, thanks to its generous x-height and open apertures. Its broad range of weights make it adaptable for diverse design needs.

Noto Sans

Noto Sans, a part of Google’s mission to support all languages with a harmonious typeface, impresses with its clean, simple forms. Available in regular and bold weights, its unfussy design is a perfect fit for minimalist aesthetics.

While these fonts are free and ready for download on Google Fonts, making them accessible for designers on any budget, they offer significant advantages. They are open-source, web-optimized, and incredibly versatile, catering to an extensive array of design needs and platforms.

Final Thoughts

Typography underpins minimalist design, and your font selections can significantly influence the viewer’s perception.

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Implementing the Blockquotes

We’ll start by setting up our HTML structure. We will use the blockquote HTML element, styled with a CSS class named .custom-blockquote.

<blockquote class="custom-blockquote">
  Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns to look at things in
  a different way.
  <span>Don Norman</span>
</blockquote>

Once we have our structure set up, let’s move on to the CSS. The ::before pseudo-element will play a key role in adding a unique design element to our blockquote.

@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:400italic,700');</pre>
.custom-blockquote {
font-size: 1.4em;
width: 60%;
margin: 50px auto;
font-family: Open Sans, sans-serif;
font-style: italic;
color: #555555;
padding: 1.2em 30px 1.2em 75px;
border-left: 8px solid #FFA07A;
line-height: 1.6;
position: relative;
background: #EDEDED;
}

.custom-blockquote::before {
content: "\201C";
color: #FFA07A;
font-size: 4em;
position: absolute;
left: 10px;
top: -10px;
font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
}

.custom-blockquote span {
display: block;
color: #333333;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: bold;
margin-top: 1em;
}

Understanding the Key Aspects

Our CSS code incorporates various elements to enhance the design of our blockquote. Here’s an explanation of the crucial aspects:

• The ::before pseudo-element: This element adds a large, stylized opening quotation mark before the blockquote’s text. We set its font-family to Arial to create a distinct look. The content property is used to insert the quotation mark, and the color property is set to #FFA07A, matching the color of the blockquote’s left border.

.custom-blockquote::before {
content: "\201C"; /* Inserts the opening quotation mark */
color: #FFA07A; /* Matches the color of the left border */
font-size: 4em; /* Sets the size of the quotation mark */
position: absolute; /* Positions the quotation mark relative to the blockquote */
left: 10px; top: -10px; /* Adjusts the position of the quotation mark */
font-family: Arial, sans-serif; /* Sets the font for a unique look */
}

• The .custom-blockquote class: This class includes multiple properties that design and position our blockquote. We set the font-family to Open Sans for the quote and the author’s name, using italic and bold variations for distinction.

.custom-blockquote {
font-size: 1.4em; /* Sets the font size for the quote and the author's name */
width: 60%; /* Adjusts the width of the blockquote */
margin: 50px auto; /* Centers the blockquote and adds margin on the top and bottom */
font-family: Open Sans, sans-serif; /* Sets the font for the quote and author's name */
font-style: italic; /* Applies italic style to the quote */
color: #555555; /* Sets the color for the quote */
padding: 1.2em 30px 1.2em 75px; /* Adds space around the quote and author's name */
border-left: 8px solid #FFA07A; /* Adds a left border with a unique color */
line-height: 1.6; /* Improves the readability of the quote */
position: relative; /* Sets the position relative to the parent element */
background: #EDEDED; /* Sets a light grey background color */
}

The Final Design

The image below showcases the final result of the implementation. You’ll see that the creative use of CSS ::before pseudo-element and other design properties result in an attractive, distinct blockquote that stands out from regular web content.

Remember, while this guide provides a specific styling, you can freely modify the color, font, size, positioning, and other properties to match your website’s design language. We encourage you to do so!

Looking for some inspiration for your own designs? We’ve collected these elegant, minimalistic web designs for you today. Take a look at these websites and their own spins on the trend.

Pitch

Pitch opens with a unique full screen intro that scrolls out and transitions into the rest of the site content. It uses clean, white design as a base but builds on it with plenty of colorful and lively animations. This is a great example of what you can do with a simple white base and a little creativity.

Hello Monday

Great animation has the power to make a simple website vivid and memorable. The intro animation alone will capture your eye, and all the beautiful transitions and hover effects round it out perfectly. This is the perfect portfolio for a branding company: one that leaves a lasting impact.

OpenAI

Clean doesn’t have to mean boring. OpenAI uses vivid images and a gorgeous gradient background while still being efficient and elegant. Scrolling transitions to white to give you a break from the rich colors, and blog pages blend a simple background with interactive elements and bright images to keep things fresh.

Outline

Check out this website if you’re aiming for minimalism and elegance balanced against vivid imagery. It introduces itself with a simple animated header, then drops you into softly scrolling sliders and bold full screen design. Product pages are intensely colorful with crisp HD pictures, and that same elegant aesthetic.

StoryCode

A little innovation is all it takes to make a simple, clean UI interesting. StoryCode opens with a cool scroll animation that pulls away to reveal their branding tagline. The three-color palette of orange, black, and white provides consistency and contrast in this design.

Jamie McLellan

You’ll definitely remember this designer’s name, as it hovers boldly behind his project images. Click a picture to see its project page, and again to zoom in closer. The whole site is in black and white barring images, but the unique UI does more than enough to make it appealing.

Okalpha

Minimalism doesn’t just mean a white background or a subtle two-toned palette. Okalpha goes all out, starting out with just a pop of color before plunging right into the bright, cartoonish hues. This definitely isn’t an easy aesthetic to pull off, but this site does it by consistently using only three bright colors to balance the intensity.

Good On You

If you’re going for a more sophisticated, muted design, look here for inspiration. This fashion website uses pale browns and blues, with each carefully picked image having just the right intensity of color to accent them.

Mozilla Dot Design

Clean design is all about the UI, and Mozilla Dot Design does it right with a bold and image-focused appearance. Its palette is striking and multi-toned, but it uses it to great effect on every single page.

Bold

Bold uses fresh and professional design to create a stunning aesthetic. The site opens to black and white tones, with a crisp video that also begins in a monochromatic palette. The middle of the page is filled with bright and beautiful colors, before transitioning back into black and white as it reaches the footer. It’s an awesome effect and great for branding.

A Fresh Take on Minimalism

Minimalism is definitely a style can be overdone, but with a unique little twist, you can breathe life into this popular trend. Take note of how each of these websites include a fresh new spin on things. A pop of color, an intriguing intro, a beautiful scrolling animation – add your own touch to it, and your site will stand out.

The principles of minimalism in web design are that a website (and other mediums as well) should be stripped down to their bare bones, while carefully making use of whitespace and improving readability with clearer typography. When implemented correctly, the result will allow users to focus on what’s truly important without being distracted by non-essential elements.

While this may sound easy, it can be difficult deciding what the truly important elements are and what’s little more than decoration. It can also be risky. Accidentally removing a seemingly innocuous element could be deemed critical by the user and could result in the wrong message (or worse, no message at all) being delivered to your target audience.

Source: Rotate°

If you think about the logistics, it makes sense that minimalism appeals to users: the less fluff on the site, the less you have to think about. When there are just a few links or blocks of text, and the point of interest is directly in front of you, you can let your mind rest for a bit – relax, and the website will spoon feed you just what you need.

This collection features fifteen websites that have been designed using the minimalistic principles mentioned above. Some of the sites have also been influenced by many of the popular web design trends we have seen over that past year or so, like flat design, yet still retain a look and feel that can only be described as minimal. Here are the beautifully designed sites:

Source: McKennaJones.co.uk

Source: Ballet BC

Source: Cropmark

Source: Inside Discovery

Source: GSArora

Source: Seedlip

Source: We Ain’t Plastic

Source: Tim Brack

Source: Hatch Inc.

Source: The Nero Design

Source: Elastique

Finshed

Minimalism isn’t the miracle solution that you can slap on every single project. There’s a time and place for everything; the time is now, but you need to carefully decide the place.

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1. I Love Typography

As we all know this popular blog – it comes as no surprise they’ve created a minimalist business card, using light, beautiful typography.

2. Business Card: Moretz

Letterpress and embossed effects are often used on business cards. A simple texture also really makes the card unique.

3. Bhootan

4. My Card

5. Labs

6. Heterobrain

7. Stephen De Wolf

Beautiful simplicity – both sides are the opposite of each other – black/white, but green a line just connects both sides and makes them familiar and related.

8. Gregory J. Wills

Simple, but technically very well spaced business card. Notice how nothing is near the edges, all information is kept in the center, image to the left – text to the right in way where is very easy to read it.

9. Fuse

Really black cards with bold, white text just can’t look bad. An interesting texture in the background makes the card more unique.

10. Business card with wooden texture

Simple business card but with an embossed wooden texture really stands out.

11. Elizabeth Maybury

Beautiful typography in this case is really enough for great branding.

12. Business Card

13. B/&W/ONI

14. Personal business card

15. Stav Garts – Photographer

You can tell right away what profession the owner of this business card is working in without even reading the text. Smart.

16. Flower Lantern

Did you notice the different card sizes?

17. Design With Style

18. Roman Feria

19. Impressions

20. Cotton Business Card

21. Minimalistic

One more photographer business card – again standing out with great photo related imagery.

22. Revolta Films

23. 19 Marks

How eye-catching! The card sides are painted orange. Little things matter!

24. Argement

Interesting light gradient effects create a professional look with ease.

25. Anatas

26. Sweat Breaker

Nice, big rounded corners grab attention. A unique presentation as well.

27. Hoey Design

Letterpress effects are really popular lately but there is a great reason for it: it looks fantastic.

28. Coma Minimal

29. Tower Co

30. Financial Risk Group

31. O2 Fitness

32. Brilliant Business Card

33. Michaelnagy

34. Kelly Kirlin

35. Rent to Own

36. Janelle Williamson

37. BËRTHAMA

38. Vinam

39. P2 Concept

40. GS Stirling

41. Also Know as

42. Amanda Front

43. Ventures

44. T&T

45. Dphotofolio

46. Montage BC

47. Tordai Law Office

48. Merkelbach

49. The Runway

50. The Secret Agent

51. Hero Film

52. T-White

53. Handmade Cafe

54. Steven Whitely

Unique approach – card related with email – measurethrice[at]gmail.com. Interesting.

55. Fundbreak Card

56. Wildorb

57. Visual Treat

58. Project Graphics

59. Yes

60. Vevia

61. Darlene Cards

62. Dolcissimo

63. Bushra Mahmood.com

64. USB Business Card

65. Business Card

66. Round Letterpress Business Cards

67. GFC

68. Exit…Stage Left Studios

69. Electronic Business Card

70. Frizitka – Business Card For Hairdresser

71. Suite Erotic shop

72. Business Card

73. Pop Grub

74. Design shop oooo.com.ua

75. Corporate Business Card

76. Cocotte

77. The Darling Room

78. Chet’s BBQ ID and Business Card

79. Black Diamond Business Card

80. Old Portfolio Good Times

81. DDQ Design Business Card

82. MindWarp Business Cards

83. (e)Studios AQUA’s business Card

84. Veel Beter Business Card

85. Hairdresser’s business card

86. Cartao Bigode

87. Social Media Advocate

88. IS Creative Studio business cards

89. Clear Plastic Business Cards Mandelli & Mandelli

90. Daguerreotype Business Card

91. Yardeni Research, Inc.

92. Business Card

93. Key Business Card

94. The Gamut Cards

95. Laptop Business Card

96. BBOY Science

97. Gray Matter Productions

98. Silk Die-Cut Business Card

99. Per Micael Nyberg Game Design

100. Generation Green Business Card

101. Metal Business Card

102. Zaha Hadid Architects Business Card

Looking for more fonts? Check out our latest free font collection: 200+ Best Modern Fonts Collection.

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1. Raleway

2. Extravaganzza

3. Caviar Dreams Minimal Font

4. Lacuna

5. Junction

6. Delicious

7. Danube

8. Gnuolane

9. Expressway

10. Cicle

11. Sertig

12. Mido

13. Metro Normal

14. Colaborate Minimal Font

15. Quicksand

16. PT Sans

17. Walkway

18. Cantarell

19. Josefin Sans STD

20. Molengo

21. Mentone

22. Hattori Hanzo

23. Emily Osment Font

24. Dezen Pro

25. Tuffy Minimalist Font

26. Otari

27. District Thin

28. Aaargh

29. Sansation

30. Tex Gyre Adventor

31. Yorkville

32. Telegrafico Minimalist Font

33. Opal

34. Decker

35. Disco

36. Apogee

37. Circula

38. Jalane Light

39. Franchise

40. Dejavu Sans

41. District Thin

42. Tex Gyre Adventor

43. Cicle

44. Yanone Kaffeesatz

45. Hattori Hanzo

46. Extravaganzza

47. Print Clearly

48. Titillium

It is any, and all space found between the margins, leading, letter-spacing, etc. Even though it’s called whitespace, it doesn’t necessarily have to be white. The blank space may be of any color, texture, or even an image.

As whitespace is capable of emphasizing a particular element of a layout, it is one of the most effective ways of guiding your users through a website.

Web design is more or less about communicating a specific message, and whitespace can significantly improve the interaction between users and content, giving you the means to guide your visitors around the site exactly how you intended.

Source: WANNA.tech

It can also have a tremendous impact on readability. Users are not willing to read cluttered, large chunks of text, therefore, whitespace can be used to establish a clear typographical hierarchy, making reading much more pleasurable.

Source: CRRTT.com

Structured text with well-proportioned whitespace will also significantly make your content digestible and memorable, helping to improve comprehension.

Source: Lionel Durimel

It can also be used to establish a feeling of sophistication and finesse into your design. Combined with well-structured typography, whitespace creates a feeling of reliability and self-sufficiency. It can send strong signals of quality to your site visitors.

Source: Patrick David

Of course, this is hard to measure, but whitespace can bring harmony and balance to your design. It welcomes its viewers. It enables them to feel comfortable and allows them to find their way around your site in a smooth and timely manner.

Source: Moze.com

Source: Fell Swoop

Source: Mitchell Barton

Source: Volta Footwear

Source: Big Horror Athens

Source: Grana.cc

Source: Basic Agency

Source: Flarin.com

Source: Drexler.com

Every web designer should take whitespace into consideration, but not all do. While some have mastered the art and have designed web layouts that are as close to web design perfection as you can get, as you have seen from this showcase.

Icons bring designs and interfaces alive; they engage people and help them interact. Simplicity of them is also their advantage.

All the Icons, Fonts, Web Templates & Design Assets You Could Ask For

1. Premium Pixels Icon Set

The icon set contains 58 pixel-perfect icons which you are free to use in personal and commercial projects. The download includes the PSD, the CSH file for the shapes, and PNGs.

2. Pixicus Icon Set

A set of 106 pixel perfect icons by Fabio Basile (@fffabs).

3. Soft Media Icons Set Vol 2

A set of 32 icons in 32x32px with subtle and useful icons including e-commerce icons such as shopping basket, price tag, delivery box and more.

4. Glyphicons

GLYPHICONS is a library of precisely prepared monochromatic icons and symbols, created with an emphasis on simplicity and easy orientation. You get 400 small PNGs for free.

5. Clean Icon Set

A set of 20 clean action icons at 32px x 32px in size and in PNG format, the original PSD is also included. Free for personal and commercial use.

6. MimiGlyphs

Hand crafted, infinitely scalable icons for user interface designers. 80 icons, 16 by 16px. Photoshop file, CSH file & PNG. Free for personal and commercial use.

7. Micro Icon Set

A set of 110 icons at 16x16px. Vector and fully scalable. A backlink is required if you use them.

8. Glyph UI Icon Set

Hand crafted set of 48 icons at 16x16px. PNG, PSD, CSH (custom vector shape). A backlink is required if you use them.

9. Minicons.

A set of 30 minimal icons at 16x16px. You can also purchase the full version with 110 icons at GraphicRiver.

10. Broccolidryiconsaniconset

A set of 108 at 32x32px. Comes as PSD.

11. Geomicons

A set of 32 icons. .EPS Licensed under Creative Commons 3.0

12. Delicious Berries

Delicious Berries Icons is a premium icon set containing 560 vector Photoshop shapes, perfect for apps or projects of any kind. You can download a preview of 50 icons for free.

13. 350 Pixel Perfect Icons

A set of 350 pixel perfect glyphs icons, perfect for apps, websites or just about anything you can think of. You may use this icon set for both personal and commercial use, which means this resource can be used in any project without worrying about licensing.

14. Freecns

A set of 218 UI icons (16px) for free download.

15. pixiconz

A set of 285 hand drawn 12/12 pixel icons for designers, in a single PSD file. A pack of 33 icons can be downloaded for free.

16. Pixeds

Set of 209 perfect pixel icons made in16x16 for your projects in a single .psd file. The free pack includes only 20 icons but the price is just too good to not to buy the full set.

17. Jigsoar icons

A free, creative commons licensed custom designed icon set with 60 vector shapes, perfect for the web.

18. Impressionist UI

Impressionist is a kit of UI design elements. It also includes an icon set designed by Sergey Shmidt. You can find all icons in the paid version.

19. Pace Social Icon Set

24 social icons in JPG, PNG & PSD format. 21.

20. Vector Icon Set

A set of 35 crisp minimal vector icons.

Although difficult to master, minimalism is something you can learn easily. If you want to try out minimalism in any artistic endeavor, you have to strip the work to the barest that it can be.

It’s about stripping it until the unnecessary is removed without going in the way of the purpose.

You might also like to learn about how the great art movements have inspired modern web design or how modern surrealism is used in design today.

With those aims, designers focus on subtracting the unneeded elements- and more designers are jumping into this popular concept lately.

This popularity has increased rapidly as the trend of flat design invaded the market. With Flat Design, which applies the concepts minimalism sponsors, more and more websites have adapted the thinking that less is truly more.

But has it ever occurred to you why minimalism is popular? What lies behind the popularity of this design concept? And as web designers, how are we going to use this popularity to make our designs more effective and more beautiful?

Let’s find out.

Less is More

The pioneer architect Ludwig Meis van der Rohe probably never knew that when he said, “Less is more”, he would be influencing a lot of brilliant minds that lived after him. These three words sum up what minimalism is – concise and straight to the point.

When designing a website, you should always ask yourself a question, “What is my point?” This way, you will understand where to lead your viewers.

Having a cluttered design will only block the point. Unneeded elements tend to become obstacles rather than bridges in sending your aim to the viewer.

Why is this bad?

• It distracts the user to other things in the design than responding to your call to action.
• It clutters the window making it more difficult to understand.

As a designer, you have to prune your content, cut away the useless, less helpful and irrelevant elements.

How to achieve more from less?

• Plan your website more carefully. This prevents you from adding the unnecessary elements before you even touch the design.
• Define your purpose. If the design element doesn’t help you to serve your purpose, remove it.
• Spend time in asking yourself, “Do I really need this?”
• Try to use some click tracking software on your website to locate elements that are never used by the viewers. After that, assess if the unused elements will be deleted or transferred.
• Go back to basics.

Responsiveness of Designs

With the number of smartphone users increasing every day, websites need to be responsive. Once your website can be viewed and responds beautifully, you are increasing your chances of getting to your goal.

Now, why did I mention responsive web design here? What role does it play in minimalism’s popularity?

An Important One

Responsive websites, with the use of a one-of-a-kind wire-frame and grid system can result into a smooth transition from desktop to mobile versions.

With less content, fewer blocks and design elements (which minimalism adheres), together with the addition of a ton of white space, minimalist websites have greater chances of translating into beautiful mobile versions.

One more thing about responsiveness and its correlation to minimalism is the users. Mobile users are less patient, always busy and on-the-go. Most of the time, they have limited data plans and a more limited schedule. Getting the regular mobile user to the information can be very advantageous. Remember, if the users want it, give it to them ASAP.

Here are a few things you need to remember about responsive design:

• Think Responsive. There are ideal layouts for the responsive design and there are others which are not. Understanding that would make you design websites for any device.
• Pay attention to breakpoints. Resolutions have set of different breakpoints. These breakpoints will be your guide into designing for different screen sizes.
• Images should be flexible. When resizing widths, make your images as adaptive as possible.

Lighter Websites

You are in a hot-air balloon. You step in, turn the burner on, and the balloon expands. But you can’t take off because these heavy bags of sand pull your balloon to the ground. What would you do?

That answer is probably the point of lighter websites being a major contributor in the popularity of minimalism. Having few elements in a design will mean a lighter website.

• Less content, widgets, design elements would mean fewer data need to be downloaded by your browser, giving you a faster, lighter, more efficient and more productive user experience.
• You basically design with responsiveness in mind because you are thinking about how fast your website will load on a mobile device.
• Having lighter websites will mean easier updating, maintenance and troubleshooting.

Remember, no sane individual would love a website that takes forever to load.

Here are a few tips:

• Delete unused plugins.
• If something is ineffective, scrap it out.
• If you can create design elements using code, code it.
• Know when to use PNG, GIF or JPG.

More Content-Driven

Content is king. I bet we all know that. I think what drives people towards minimalism is its content-driven mentality. As minimalist websites want to do away with unnecessary elements, and strip the design into the barest form possible, it makes the user focus on what matters most: content.

Without all the distractions, the users can easily find what they need so to easily respond to calls to action. This makes the efficiency of websites higher because it yields better conversions with very minimal effort in designing and maintenance.

How to design for content?

• Use proper alignment.
• Use white space.
• Use proper fonts.
• Size matters!

Conclusion

Why is minimalism so popular? Well, it reflects the way of life that encourages introspection. What are the things I do not need? What are the essential things for me? And as a designer, answering that question will lead you to realizing what really helps you and what you should hold on to and keep. Happy designing!

The architects during the early 20^th century believed that such ornamentation were no longer relevant and appropriate to the modern times so they embraced new building techniques of concrete, steel, glass, and mass production.

The same thing can be said about web design. Prior to the emergence of flat design, most web designers often incorporated skeuomorphic design with ornamental and overrated features that added aesthetic values to the product they were designing.

While it is true that such ornamental additions made their works more visually appealing, many failed in delivering what web users really want: usability of a product.

Is it really the end for the skeuomorphic design as more and more brands go for the flat and minimalist web design?

When you think of it, flat or minimalist design is not really new. It is more of a resurrection or re-emergence of modernism utilized in different mediums. In terms of the popularity of minimalist design in UI, it can be said that the shift stemmed from the public expectations years ago.

While it is true that it is important to capture users’ attention with an awesome and detailed design, that shouldn’t be the focus. For many users, the detail should not just be admired, but they also need to be functional.

As expected, not all web designers are ecstatic about the flat and minimalist design. Many are unhappy that the highly detailed and skeuomorphic trend of the past has fallen from its glory. There are even those who looked down on the flat design, stating they cannot fathom how it has gained popularity.

However, skeuomorphic design is not totally out of the picture. In fact, it still has its share of popularity alongside the flat and minimalist flat design. Perhaps, the most notable change is that skeuomorphic design is used more appropriately these days.

If you look at the skeuomorphic and flat design, it is unfair to put more value on one over the other. To a certain extent, it wouldn’t be fair to compare the two in terms of which style shows more character, skill, and meaning. While it’s true that coming up with an app icon these days, for instance, would only use a fraction of the time used to make one in the past, the arduous mental process of creating it remains the same.

Surely, there are some non-formally trained designers who take shortcut these days, thanks to the various free UI kits, self-building websites, and flat design color palettes. However, if you compare their works to the ones done by professionally trained designers, they will surely pale in comparison.

It is true, however, that the emergence of flat design has taken a toll on the perception of craftsmanship significance by some designers.  On the other hand, it has also led to the explosion of other aspects of the design process like UX and animation.

So, is this a bad thing? Well, not totally. Nonetheless, it’s a bad thing for designers who lost their jobs because the arrival of flat design has, indeed, simplified the processes involved in web design.

White Space and Minimalism

With more and more companies and web designers embracing the minimal or flat design, it can be said that it is here to stay. Therefore, it is not really surprising why the number of designers also using white for their negative space is on the constant rise.

If you compare the white space to a movie, it can be likened to the supporting actors. It may not be the focus, but it certainly helps in bringing out the best in the main character, making him shine further.

If you are the kind of designer who doesn’t think that there is no need for you to have any blank space in your design, then, you should think again. It’s high time you embraced the mindset that using too many objects in your design can leave it a disaster as each competes for attention with one another.

While it is true that white space influences the aesthetics of a design, it is more than that. In fact, it serves 3 other functions that can surely make your design more effective:

1. Improves Comprehension

It has been proven that white space improves comprehension by as much as 20 %. If your interface is loaded with too much information, how can you expect your user to comprehend everything in it? Therefore, you need to reduce the clutter so that it be easier for your website visitors to comprehend the information that you have placed.

Built by Buffalo’s white space emphasizes its logo and other elements.

It has been proven that, if you use white space between paragraphs and in the left and right margin, the ability of the user is increased by 20%. This enables you to provide a comprehensible amount of content as the extraneous details are stripped away.

2. Helps in Creating Mental Maps

Apart from improving comprehension, white space also aids your users’ creation of mental maps. Minimal white space is employed between the top navigation and content stream, since both of them have similar functions in leading the user deeper into content.

The right-side navigation is more focused on creating and saving content, so more white space borders it from the content stream. In this case, white space helps users assign various functionalities to different parts of the interface. If users click through to an article, white space helps them focus the content.

3. Attracts Attention

As mentioned above, the absence of other elements will only make existing elements more noticeable. If you add lots of white space to separate the categories from the search function, for instance, the category icons become much more pronounced.

The use of lots of white space in the case of Philip House highlights its image and attracts attention.

If you combine it with an animation-like color fill that’s triggered upon hovering, the category section becomes further noticeable and can successfully call users to action.  Nonetheless, you should know when to reduce or alter the spacing between content because users have selective attention.

Four Major Elements of White Space

White space has four elements, namely:

1. Visual white space –  the space surrounding the graphics, icons, and images
2. Layout white space – this includes the margins, paddings, and gutters.
3. Text white space – the spacing between lines and letters
4. Content white space – the space that separates columns of text.

Medium is one example of an impressively nice balance of all four elements of white space. Users want to access the content that interests them as quickly as possible. Medium’s homepage makes this possible by placing the content in the center and the front, emphasized by lots of white space on both sides.

Medium has impressively used and balanced all four elements of white space

The visuals and the between lines of copy also abound with white space. The minor issue here is that the padding around the images is not uniform as the space found at the left of each image is not consistent with their space below.

White Space and Human Attention and Memory

The power of white space, to a certain extent, is influenced by human attention and memory. If you compare the interfaces of Yahoo and Google, you will notice that Yahoo offers its users many possible actions all at once.

Google does not need a lot of aesthetics to make a point

On the other hand, Google just knows that the main reason why people use search engines is because they just want to find things that they need or want. It goes without saying that Google’s design is more realistic as it encourages a more interactive interaction.

Taking Advantage of Minimalism in Web Design

The lightweight layouts and low maintenance of minimalism make it flexible for a responsive design that it is naturally elegant. Hence, it is not surprising why many brands have embraced it.

A minimalist design does not mean it is easy to make

However, appreciating minimalism and recreating it are not synonymous with each other. Some people think that copying a minimalist style because of its sparse elements is easy. The truth is designing a minimalist site requires a lot of thinking and effort because designers only have a few elements to work with.

So, how do you use minimalism and take full advantage of it?

You need to understand that, popular as it may be these days, minimalist design is not for everybody. You first need to honestly assess if this style is the right thing for your website. While the technique works great for straightforward businesses, like agency sites and creative portfolios, it becomes trickier for more complex sites.

Here are some of the common concerns about the minimalist design:

Too Much Content

This problem is best exemplified by Amazon and eBay. A minimalist interface is not suited for these sites as they need a more detailed one that can support each of their categories.

Nonetheless, both Amazon and eBay have adapted some of the principles of minimalism, like hiding the content if a user does not need it. Hence, if your site offers a lot of content, going for a minimalist design may not just be the right thing to do.

Minimalism may not just be right for Ebay and Amazon because of their numerous elements

Ads Overload

On the whole, paid ads and minimalism don’t go hand in hand. Since minimalism is precise and finicky, the entire design of your website may be ruined by petty things, such as the ads color, especially if you have no control of the things that come from the ads server.

How about if the ad is pre-set? There is that danger of the ad not being compatible with your design.

Boring

If your website caters to children or young adults, never ever make a mistake of going for a minimalist design. Bear in mind that children and young adults have a short attention span and a minimalist design will easily bore them.

Remember, those who belong to this bracket prefer something more visual to stimulate their senses,

Before going for minimalism design, you need to understand that it works by applying a particular set of criteria that sets it apart from other styles. Hence, you need to contemplate carefully before deciding to go for it.

Valuable Guidelines for Minimalism

Minimalism will greatly benefit a landing page

1. Landing Page Only. Since minimalism restricts the use of many elements, content-rich websites are at risk if they adapt this design. The best thing that these sites can do, if they really want to use the minimalist approach, is to apply the minimalist landing page that will eventually lead customers to more detailed pages of the site.
2. Crisp Copy. Few words, few mistakes. Remember what your writing teacher constantly reminds you about omitting those superfluous words in your elementary writing class? Well, you should apply that reminder even more if you decide to go for a minimalist design.
3. Heavy at the Top. To sync with the users’ browsing habit, you need to place your high-level content at the top section of the screen. Make sure to provide lots of white space. As the scroll deepens, gradually increase the density of the content.
4. Keep It Interesting. Holding the interest of your visitors or users is the biggest challenge of going for minimalism. While it is true that simplicity is beauty, not everybody subscribes to this belief. At times, the simplicity of your site because of its minimalist design can bore your visitors or users. One way to address this concern is to change your layout. You can go for alternating layouts that run along the Z-shaped reading pattern.
5. One Concept Per Page. In order to adhere to the concept of simplicity, make sure that each page of your site should only have one concept, zeroing in on a single visual.
6. Don’t Go Beyond Five. The content section for a minimalist concept should not go beyond 5. If you have more than 5 sections, make sure to remove the less important ones.
7. Start simple. This is a very good way for you to identify what’s important and what’s not. Start with a black and white wireframe, then inject other things like color at the latter part

Knowing what to keep and what to throw can be quite a challenge if you are new to applying minimalism. To make things easier for you, here’s the list of the things that you should consider as essentials and throwaways:

Essentials:

• Logo
• Navigation options
• Body content
• Contact information.

Throwaways:

• Social media links/icons
• Footers
• Widgets

If you can’t let go of those listed on the throwaways, then, maybe you should not go for the minimalist design. On the other hand, if you have no issues with letting go of any of the mentioned, you can expect yourself to get better at knowing what really matters and what doesn’t as you continue to embrace minimalism.  That will not only benefit you as a minimalist designer but your life, in general, too.

Integrating Minimalism in Other Styles

One of the many good things about minimalism is that it can look good when combined with other styles that result in a stronger and better style or technique. This is especially true these days, when mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, are prevalent.

If a minimalist style is used in conjunction with other styles, it can help a design become more fully-responsive, reducing a site’s maintenance without sacrificing its quality.

Here are some of the other styles that are commonly paired with minimalism:

• Flat Design.Since both flat design and minimalism have a shared emphasis on simplicity, there is no denying that they are a perfect combination. Both minimalism and flat design have let go of intrinsic designs in order to focus more on the content.Furthermore, the basic style of flat design is already minimalistic, hence, it is often equated to a minimalistic design, just like what is mentioned in the earlier part of this article.

Flat design and minimalism simply go hand in hand.

• Hero Headers and Images. Despite the popularity of flat design, there are some sites that have shifted away from the trend and embraced another, which zeroes in on an image-focused style.Since these large photos and images are already enough to gather attention to them, a page or the site itself no longer needs to be further intricate. Hence, pairing it with a minimalist style is the most sensible thing to do so that competition for the users’ attention can be avoided.

Minimalism and image-focused design are just a perfect combination

• Simple Navigation. This simply means that you can simplify the navigation by using a single button, such as the hamburger icon, which, in turn, only reveals the complete navigation menu if it is hovered over or clicked by a user.Nonetheless, bear in mind that this strategy is not for everybody. If things are oversimplified, they might defeat the purpose of navigation, especially if users fail to recognize the buttons.

Minimalism has, indeed, made navigation way simple in the case of ETQ

• Dramatic Typography. More often than not, words are part of the essentials of a minimalist screen. Hence, typography is taken to a new level of importance in a minimalist design. In fact, typography plays an important role in a minimalist site to define its personality.

Minimalism can make your typography even more

What a Minimalist Design Can Do to Your Business

If you have a business-related website, should you totally go for a minimalist design or combine it with other styles? There is no reason for you not to do so. In fact, more and more business-related websites have benefitted from a minimalist design because of the following reasons:

1. No room to play loose. With a minimalist design, you don’t have room to play loose. Every element on the page is considered and is there for a good purpose. You can’t afford to be undecided on what to include on it. You have to be short and concise in order to deliver your message well.

With a minimalist design, you can’t afford to play loose as every element matters

2. Faster page loading. One thing about a minimalist website is that you have lesser resources. This means that you don’t really need a big storage space for your server. This averts the overloading of your server with big file videos, flash, or other less relevant content.

It also means that your business website will not be slowed down with hundreds of plugins, resulting in you’re the faster loading of your page. The faster your page loads, the faster your users get what they want and be called to action.

3. Less clutter equals better conversion. Since your page has less clutter, it is a lot easier for your page’s USP (Unique Sales Proposition) to be noticed. The more noticeable it becomes, the higher your conversion rate you have.

Conclusion

While it is true that minimalism has cost some designers their job, it does not really signal the fall of designers. Instead, designers should look at it as their new way, possibility, or technology in this new era of design.

Reduced loading time. Easier responsive design.

These are just some of the advantages of a minimalist design. If your site is qualified to all of the things discussed above, don’t you think it’s high time that you reimagined it? You will find out that letting go of the things that have little importance to your website is actually not that difficult to do.