Minimalist website design: How not to overdo it
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April 2, 2019Having a beautiful website is not a guarantee of success. Web designers have to try hard to balance the design between looking professional and beautiful at the same time. It is known that sites that are pretty don’t perform better than the ones that have a serious and corporate design. Sometimes potential partners are turned off by visuals on a website, which is bad for business.
The problem is not always the client. Sometimes web designers add too many colors, shadows, borders or other design elements. An over-designed website can be difficult to look at, which could make it harder for users to stay on it.
Minimalism in Web Design
In art, minimalism is all about removing the unnecessary and only leaving the essential elements. The idea is to get through to the viewer, no matter what is the medium. Artistic photographs can have many essential elements, like shadow, color, light, shape or space. If you want a minimalist picture, you have to take one part and make it the key component.
Minimalism is often compared to simplicity in art. However, it is much more complicated than that. Just because there are fewer components, it doesn’t mean that it is easier to achieve. In reality, minimalism can be very hard, because you have to use fewer components, but you still have to get the message to the viewer.
Minimalist website design has fewer components, but designers have to make sure that the site has the same level of functionality. A true minimalist website has to make use of space, interesting typography and gorgeous visuals. Furthermore, this kind of website has to draw focus solely on content.
There are many different ways to make a minimalist website. Designers have to try out various colors, new methods of navigation or even try to remove anything that is not necessary. Since there is no one specific set of rules for these websites, the results can be very different.
These websites have no clutter; nothing is out of place. They are simple, easy to use and nice to look at. However, you have to keep in mind that designing a minimalist website is not easier than creating a traditional site. It is much harder. Trying to make everything simple, but functional can be quite challenging.
Fundamentals of minimalism:
- Exciting typography
- No traditional navigation
- Simple and easy to use interface
- Up to three colors on the website
- Only necessary buttons and links
- A large amount of free space
- No extra design features like gradient, textures, shadows etc.
Minimalist websites are free of all elements that are not needed, enabling them to have a simple interface.
Minimalism can offer you a lot of benefits, besides being nice to look at. Why you should consider having a minimalist website:
- Intuitive navigation
- Responsive design is easier to achieve
- These websites can load faster, because of the absence of unnecessary elements
- The focus is on the content, product or service
- Minimalism in website design is here to stay
Top tips for a minimalist website
Minimalist websites are quite popular now, but that doesn’t mean that you can remove everything from your site and say it has a minimalist design. It is important not to overdo it. When discussing with your designer, don’t forget to mention what elements your website must have and what is not that important. The most common idea is to have a lot of white space, with other parts being in no more than three different colors. The organization of components is crucial if you want your visitors to have great experience.
It would be best for your web designer to get familiar with your content and your marketing strategy. Both can be very important to the design, especially in the early stages. Every site ever built has a few essential elements without which it would lose all sense and purpose. Minimalism for some is all about the vast empty spaces, but at the end of the day, every website should be about its content.
The good thing about minimalist websites is that they can easily be made responsive. This means that the site will show adequately no matter what the device the user has.
Find the perfect images
Images are part of the appeal of every website. Make sure to invest some time into finding the photos that are in high quality, but also the ones that can help you get through to your visitors.
Web designers tend to choose images of a certain quality for simple websites. Since in most cases the white space dominates, designers pick images that either has a white background or have a light composition. All pictures on your site must be connected to your brand somehow, so avoid using images that just look nice. They have to be part of your brand strategy.
What sets a minimalist website apart from others is the typography. It is one of the critical elements of this trendy design. The idea is to draw focus on your content through bold and creative fonts.
The character of your website will be defined by the typography. Furthermore, make use of textures, borders, paragraphs and headings to draw focus to certain parts of content.
Don’t be afraid of having lots of white space
One of the key elements of minimalist web design is the use of white space (sometimes also called negative space). The absence of unnecessary elements just draws focus on existing components. The reason why minimalism is so popular is that it is completely different from recent trends.
Experts figured out that by removing elements, you can manipulate how the user experiences your site.
The negative space doesn’t always have to be white. It can be in any color, but it is important that this color dominates.
The whole idea of this new trend in web design is to leave on your site just the necessary elements. Every visitor to your site should only see the components that are of highest importance and nothing else. It would be best if every element of your website is there with a purpose.
On the other hand, don’t get carried away and not include something that your visitor might need. You don’t have to hide everything, instead make it clearer and more precise.
Find the right color scheme
Nothing can establish an emotional connection between your website and visitors as easy as a good choice of colors. Experienced web designers have learned how to use colors to direct attention without using visual elements.
The unwritten rule of minimalistic design is not to use more than three colors on one website. Often minimalist websites have a monochrome color scheme.
If you want the design of your website to be most effective, you have to create a great structure. It is necessary that every element is placed to achieve perfect harmony.
Creating a grid is necessary for the designer to know where to put all the required elements. Furthermore, you can strategically use the alignment of text to achieve strong visual effects. As you know, text can be either centered or aligned left or right, which can help you draw focus to content that is important to you.
