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The minimalist backlash
… or, how to avoid a simple design.
In the past 6 months I've seen a really strong move among web designers to very minimal designs. For a while it seemed like a good thing; I watched designs gradually become simpler and more content-focused. Some talented designers were proving that you can, in fact, do more with less, and most everyone was happy.
Like all good moves, however, things eventually got out of control. Less experienced designers started pushing the minimalist envelope too far, reducing their designs to very basic sites with hardly any colors or images. Things were no longer simple. They were just plain. To be honest, my opinion from the very start was that untalented "designers" were using this as a cop-out to pretend they were being "minimalists" when, in reality, they lacked the skill, effort, or money to attain unique designs. This may sound harsh, but I think we can agree that some were missing the point altogether. The return to minimalism was a backlash to heavy, flashy, buzzword-friendly sites with lots of images and colors. It was about making design more content-focused and friendly to users. It was not about removing design altogether.
I realized things had gone too far when I received a message from a blogger who was in the middle of designing his site. He asked me to have a look at it since he couldn't think of anything to add to it but he was worried it was too plain. He admitted he was going for the "minimal" look and I immediately knew what the problem was. His site was well structured but it was as plain as could be. It had three colors; white, gray, and black. There were no images except for a round background for the comments link. That was it. I knew it was supposed to be minimal but it was nothing more than boring.
I told this person to add something, anything to his design that would make it stand out. The truth about painfully simple designs is that they lack personality. There is no visual branding and nothing to remember them by. This is important for any website, whether a business or community or blog. Google may be simple, but it has a distinct logo. If their title was simply plain text, first-time visitors wouldn't have much to remember them by. Scobleizer understands this, and to this day I can't get that image of his funny face out of my mind.
In the end, this blogger took my advice and added a simple stock image to his header, and I really think it made a difference. It broke the monotony of black/white/gray and added some personality to the page as well.
It's not just about logos, though
My problem with minimalism is not just about pretty pictures. There are a lot of little details that go into a successful site design which are often completely overlooked by "minimalists." These important little details are discussed at length in How C.R.A.P. is your site design?, which is a must-read for anyone interested in web design. C.R.A.P. stands for contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity, and good designs are often characterized by their attention to these details rather than their flashy graphics. A sort of litmus test I use for any site that is too simple is simply looking at the size of the stylesheet. If a stylesheet just contains a few simple rules for layout and the occasional color inversion, I can tell the designer quit too soon. I know that the best designers (that is, the ones I admire) spend time on all the details that often go unnoticed; little changes to the way text, links, icons, and more are displayed that greatly improve the overall aesthetic value of a site. To put it simply, Veerle's blog doesn't make me feel good just because it has a nice drawing at the top; dig through it and you'll see that every element of her site was given great attention to make the final product.
But it's all about content
Some might have read this far and thought, "this is a pro-design rave. My blog/application/etc. is all about the content, and I don't want to let design get in the way of that." This might seem like a wise idea, but it's far from it. Like I said before, one of the goals of design is to give something a personality, even a brand, that users will take away with them. When visitors see my site, they rarely forget Domo-kun or the videogame homages. Those graphics may have taken me hours of hard work, in a medium that is still alien to me, but the return on investment is much higher than what any "minimalist" design can accomplish. Good design takes time, and I think it's worth it.
Here are some tips I can share on how to avoid a simple design:
- Don't be afraid to use images. To this day, the rule for a fast loading site is 50kb. With lightweight markup, CSS, and even Javascript, it's entirely possible to stay under that limit. Liquid Designs totals about 14 kB of images for the design and another 20 for the 3 thumbnails and one ad on the main page. Keeping the page light didn't mean avoiding images altogether.
- Play with text. Try modifying the spacing between elements such as paragraphs, headers, and lists. Add lines wherever visual divides are needed. Make important text stand out in unusual ways.
- Make text elements like blockquotes, list-items, and links stand out. Give them different colors or icons that call attention to them. Use a different list-marker than the standard dot.
- Give your links nice hover effects, and denote visited links as well. Changing the color is a good start, and you can try playing with effects on their borders or backgrounds to achieve a unique result.
- Give your content images borders. Even a simple dotted, dashed, outset, or solid border on your images can help them fit the design rather than looking out of place. I added a thick dashed border to the images on foxy m cloud that, in my opinion, calls attention to them in a subtle way while making them feel like a part of the design at the same time.
- Don't be afraid to use an image for your title. If the title of your website is the one place where you use an image, then it's a good place. You can do a lot of cool effects with text based headers too, but for the title, a unique font and a nice logo can really stick in your visitor's minds. You can see that even on this site.
Last but not least, here are some true "minimal" but very well designed sites. Notice the attention in the details that takes them from plain to pleasing:
In all, there are lots of ways to make small changes to a design that can take it from "simple" to unique. Even if the result is not stellar, I think the presence of a strong visual personality is what matters. Even the ugliest of designs are hard to forget 
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That's some very helpful advice. Thanks a lot
Sitting in 130 right now watching your presentation. Minimalist is spelled wrong. Nice lecture though!
Wow Jenn, I can't believe I didn't notice that. I've been really blind lately. Thanks.
Haha, I thought that was to me at first…
Dooce does not seem so minimalistic to me. I agree on 37signals though.
How about this one: http://www.midea.pl/covers/ — is it minimalistic? IMO has less graphics than dooce…
Pawel: No, it's not minimalistic, but it looks nice. That's far more important.
what about http://numberoneblogger.com/? Is it minimalistic?
Nice article. I'm planning to write a post about it.
Thanks. A really interesting article. I quite agree with your take on website "minimalism".
Sorry Chris, but whilst your points are valid in theory, your take on minimalism misses the point. The recent minimal movement is (in my view) a reaction to the same old boring 3-column clutter-fests that seem so prevalent. 'Content' and 'minimalism' can work in harmony, but they are not directly related. Dooce is NOT minimal, nomatter whether it's nice or not.
Huh, “dooce†minimalist webdesign..?
Bob: If you would listen to the users (not techies who know what RSS means, but the users who make up the other 99% of the Internet population), then you would realize that they don't care much at all for this minimalist crap. By minimalist crap, I mean no logo, no colors, no contrast, no strong elements, nothing. Users hate it and they want websites that attract their attention.
Dooce is by far a perfect example of minimalism in moderation which is what I am trying to get you all to see. It's not up for argument. Scroll past the header (which I know none of you have done) and you will see that the content of the website is very simple and cleanly done. It invites the user to read it, which probably has something to do with why Dooce is a top ten blog. It's called "minimalism done right."
Well!
Yes, I know that 99% of folks hate minimalist (anything) but that doesn't make it 'wrong' - it only makes it specialist. It's "too subtle for most". The Dooce site isn't minimalist (how could it be, with two flashing advert bars?!!!!!) - it's neat and tidy. It is nice, but it isn't minimalist. Look it up here:
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/movement_works_Minimalism_0.html
Bob, it's not fair to judge it on the basis of its flash adverts… that's how she feeds her family. I'm talking about the parts of the design that she controls… remove the flash adverts and you have a perfect blog design, one that the 99% of folks do appreciate (her biggest audience is middle-aged women).
As for the link you showed me, it's a great example… and I think it speaks somewhat to what I've been saying. The works in that collection are not devoid of strong colors or eye-catching elements… they are just simple in their execution. That's what I've been trying to get at… catch your users' eyes, be loud, just do it with as few elements as possible. Dooce, for example, grabs you with her masthead, and then just gives you a calm, simple content design thereafter.
I take it you don't really like my site then…
btw, when you say "I know that the best designers (that is, the ones I admire)." Does that mean you only admire the best or what you admire is automatically the best?
Always fun to read articles about design from computer engineers…
Yann: I am the final word on who the best designers are. My opinions are definite facts. Also, your site is boring.