Do most websites get minimalism wrong?

Discussion in 'Skinning, Design and Graphics' started by CM30, Jan 12, 2014.

  1. CM30

    CM30 Regular Member

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    Because while the trend in website design does seem to be towards that (and some sites using it look absolutely fantastic), it seems an awfully large amount of communities and other sites seem to completely mess up minimalist designs and end up with a terrible looking site as a result.

    Indeed, quite a few seem to forget that 'minimalist' doesn't mean 'site style with every colour replaced by white and grey'.

    Like vBulletin 5 and its attempt at a 'layout'. Or Digitalspy and its somewhat empty looking new site design. Or Moby Games and its style that was so bad it scared away most of the userbase until they changed it back. Or Admin Fusion, which for years had a rather awful looking style that seemed to have all the 'soul' sucked right out of it.

    So what do you think? Is minimalism something that a lot of designers seem to get wrong, especially those working for large companies? Do a lot of sites kind of miss the point of it and attempt to implement it in a bad way, with terrible results?
     
    CM30, Jan 12, 2014
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    Peace likes this.
  2. Peace

    Peace Regular Member

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    Yes, I completely agree with this! I understand trying to modernize, but many of these themes just make the site look lonely and desolate. I would add AVForums to your list as well.

    In my opinion, a community should look cozy :)
     
    Peace, Jan 13, 2014
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  3. AWS

    AWS Administrator

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    What I think is happening is we live in a mobile world now. Flashy good looking designs don't look good on a 4 inch or 5 inch phone screen. What does look good on those devices is what you see more and more everyday.

    In a way the web has come full circle. When all we had was a desktop and a 56K connection most sites had a visual appealing graphics laden design that took forever to load. Once broadband became the norm sites started to switch to minimalist styles. It seems that design lags a few years behind.

    And speaking of Admin Fusion it seems that after the sale to the new owner the site was left to die. Same thing with @Brandon old site vbulletin setup. vbulletin setup got so bad that the filestore redirection exploit remained active for months before they decided to fix it.
     
    AWS, Jan 13, 2014
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  4. SpacewardAsh

    SpacewardAsh Lurking From Space

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    Give me a responsive design that works on all widths with different sizes without disrupting the flow that looks good, then all shall be well...give me a bland and boring style, then I'm not likely to visit again...enough said!

    In this day in age, I don't understand why sites and companies are acting as if we've all taken a step back so need plain sites, when all you need to do is use some CSS to make a site look nice to replace images in the event of slow mobile connections...
     
    SpacewardAsh, Jan 18, 2014
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  5. eva2000

    eva2000 Regular Member

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    what's wrong with white/greys for minimalistic designs http://ghost.centminmod.com ? :D

    Average page sizes are ballooning out http://www.webperformancetoday.com/2013/06/05/web-page-growth-2010-2013/ and http://httparchive.org/interesting.php?a=All&l=Dec 15 2013&s=Top1000 with prediction of end of 2014 jumping to 2.3MB per page http://www.webperformancetoday.com/2014/01/07/eight-web-performance-predictions-for-2014/ !
     
    eva2000, Jan 20, 2014
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  6. AWS

    AWS Administrator

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    Page size doubled. I thought it would have been the other way. Decreasing. But then broadband is available everywhere now. Hell my iPhone gives me over 10M down when I use it as a hotspot. So with faster speeds it would make sense to see more page bloat. Although I am seeing many sites go to more text base minimal designs instead of graphical designs.

    George, I happen to like that layout. My blog is minimalist as well.
     
    AWS, Jan 21, 2014
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  7. eva2000

    eva2000 Regular Member

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    Yeah mobile speeds are getting faster i.e. South Korea has announced LTE-A 300Mbps for mobile !!!

    But from my Google Analytics page speed stats monitoring there's still plenty of countries/visitors who are on slow connections so have to be mindful i.e. look at break down stats at http://ghost.centminmod.com/ghost-blog-google-analytics-stats/ and http://vbtechsupport.com/2341/ some times Asian countries have between 30-120 seconds page load times !

    Also part of the page size bloat is coming from 3rd party social media code i.e. http://ghost.centminmod.com/adding-google-plus-button-worth-it/
     
    eva2000, Jan 21, 2014
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  8. AWS

    AWS Administrator

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    That is from the same company that recently bought Sprint here. Sprint just turned on some new technology that people are reporting getting in excess of 100MPS in areas where it is live. Supposedly it's the same tech that South Korea has.
     
    AWS, Jan 21, 2014
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