Minimalism

It seems that most web designers from the 2.0 internet go for minimalistic designs. Basic, plain colors, nice fonts, a couple effects, and that's it!

What are your thoughts on this kind of art? Do you prefer making a simple design or something more elaborated?

I've been a fan of minimalism for a couple of years. I believe websites should be as simple as possible so that even the most computer illiterate person can use them. I can relate to them as I had just as little knowledge on the internet as they do, a few years back. I've walked in their shoes!

 

I support this kind of design too. Minimalist designs give a calm feeling to users. Its simplicity is the main part of why forum owners often use them rather than complicated themes. Most popular forums also use minimalistic designs and you can see that they have more active members rather than forums who use themes that seem displeasing to the eyes. Google Chrome also has a simple interface and I believe that it is one of the reasons why people prefer GC over other web browsers.

 

Thought I may bump this up. Why? Lately, I've seen most forums stick to minimalist designs rather than themes full of colors, images, animations, etc. This is a good thing for someone, like me, who doesn't have a good internet connection :p

 

I'm relatively torn on this one.

I was thrilled when minimalism started trending. I love the more simplistic looks and stripping things down to only what's needed.

At the same time, I feel like a lot of designers and owners took it too far. When every site looks plain and boring because of it, then it's not good. You can still be unique with a minimalist approach and a lot of people haven't found that balance yet.

 

I am a big fan of minimalism myself. I don't like to bloat my site with elaborate effects unless the topic of the site demands it. I think most people are opting for a simpler theme since search engines now consider loading time as one of the factors while deciding the ranking.

 

I have always wanted my websites to load fast on any internet connection. That said, the best I can do is to remove a majority of those images and lessen up the codes to make the filesize smaller. The Web 2.0 interfaces and UI are quite lightweight and as such, I prefer to stick with them. When working with clients, they have to be told and explained. But then, the decision is entirely theirs. Many still want to have a jazzy, image filled layout and UI rather than rely on the Web 2.0 formats.

 

I'm not an fan of it. Anyone can create such designs, and it doesn't take much work from our part. I rather create some creative work, and then try minimizing the load on the server.

 

I'm a fan of the minimalist design, the first one that comes to mind is @dojo 's site Top Admin, I really like what she has done with that site and it seems very minimal to me.

 

Minimal designs load faster so they are typically better, but I still prefer more flashy designs that might require a better server to load just as fast as minimal designs.

 

I think minimalism is okay, but it's not right for all sites. For example, many sites aimed at either a younger or older than 'standard' audience do well with less minimal, more complex designs. It certainly doesn't work too well for a gaming or general forum.

 

Design is simply what looks good to see... With Minimalist design pattern my eyes no stress in reading content on the web and I feel it's the same for a lot of us. This has made the minimalist design patter very popular and common instead of the haphazard 90's web design.

 

Yes I agree with you here. I was even pondering how much design should really be going into your forum. I think that too much design confuses the viewer and it really is about him or her having a good experience. However, a few well-placed images are fine and a decent font.

 

I am a fan of minimalism. Google does it best with their simple search page and a simple GMail interface. Look how cluttered Yahoo's search and mail are.

Too much text and too many colors drive me away from the site.

 

Minimalist designs have long been my preference. Not only do I use them myself, but I try to push my clients toward them. There's just something about that clean, light look that I find pleasant.

 

Could this be a Niche specific thing?

I mean for a gaming niche for example users may tend to be more interactive using a website with lots of info and images. They like visual things and want lots of updates on their favourite games.

Where as a forum for parents about children/babies, a plain and simple theme may be more suitable as its a different group of users who you are trying to attract to it.

I like both ways to be fair but when designing a site I would do it depending on the audience I'm tying to attract.

 

I like more colorful sites myself.

Its sort of like baseball. I miss the uniforms from when i was a kid and they were all colorful.

Now we have the white team verses the gray team.

 

Definitely. Always know your audience and what they like. For a gaming site, I'd almost expect lots of images, darker colors, lots and lots of information. Nothing even remotely minimal!

For your baby/parents example, a minimal design with soft, light colors would work. They wouldn't want a live ticker, shoutbox, and 317 different links on the frontpage, I'd assume. Probably something a bit simpler!

I really like the idea of minimal designs for blogs. Since my blog doubles as my CV, clean, minimal and with lots of white. Sections/heading are broken off with a nice vibrant green/blue. Links are kept few and far between.

So, like you suggested, it's definitely a niche thing.

 

Exactly, your spot on!
You have to think what your audience is going to be, what age, location and ability with browsing sites. The younger generation audience are going to be a lot more I.T trained and so will have the ability to navigate a busy site, however an older audience who haven't as much experience with the internet may get confused and so need an easy to sue navigation and page layout.
Once you know your audience, it's easier to work out what site design your going to need to improve user interaction.

 

I prefer a rather simple design. A design that's way too complicated may take away from the main attraction, if it makes sense.
I am specifically talking about logos here. If someone were to design this complicated logo with tons of colors, effects, and it looked great, and then someone were to just pen tool whatever in Illustrator and just make a vector design of the logo, of course looking great as well, I would choose the vector logo.

 

I think what you are referring to is currently a trend called "flat design".

I also asked this question on another forum asking if this is just a trend or is it a longer term "this is how the internet is going to be" thing. Most said it is only a trend. I don't know.

As for such designs being "easier" to load or even easier to understand, I have to disagree a bit. More and more functionality is being pumped into the background through Javascript. Although the design is flat, the functionality of today's "site" is very interactive and sometimes not completely intuitive. As an example, I just joined Hootsuite to see what it was all about. A fairly flat design, but the dashboard through even me for a loop, until I forced myself to work with it some more. Then I got the aha effect. The problem was getting there and my first impression was WTF. Good design avoids the WTF's, flat or not. LOL! Edit: my second look trying to get the link and Hootsuite gave me a "tour" of the dashboard functionality. Why didn't that pop up the first time I started with it, because it explained nicely where I was confused. Hmm....oh well. Good UI shouldn't need much explaining in my book.

At any rate. Look up "flat design" in Google (who, IMHO, actually started flat design). So many articles and blogs, which are quite interesting talking about this trend.

Scott