Minimalist web designs look good. With regard to web design, the main advantage of minimalism is the variety of acceptable stylistic, color solutions, scale options, but the goal is always the same. Minimalism as a website design style has gained popularity due to its clear advantages. Minimalist websites load faster, consume fewer server resources, and are usually easier to upgrade than bulky graphical builds. Visitors also see in them signs of professionalism and ability to stick to the point.
Minimalism emphasized the rejection of everything superfluous in design, retaining only the main elements. The heyday of minimalism led to the emergence of new terms, narrow specializations, and was reflected in art - in music and literature. However, for website designers, mastering the techniques of building minimalistic resources is not easy, and for many, such a task is intimidating. A minimalistic sample of web design contains only the content necessary to achieve the intended goal, is distinguished by an abundance of spaces, a small number of illustrations or the presence of just one large image, and brevity of texts. Minimalist websites are not cluttered with details, the study and assimilation of information is easy for their readers, does not bother them, it is easy to navigate on their pages, few people will be able to get lost there. Most often, minimalist websites look beautiful, and among designers they have earned a particularly fond affection.
Here are 15 samples of minimalistic web design, although containing a number of "architectural excesses", but pleasing to the eye with their appearance. We hope you enjoy them.
(including flat design, the use of large background pictures as well as hidden global navigation) are directly or indirectly dictated by minimalism, a trend in web design since the early 2000s. Minimalist website design is often presented as an attempt to make content a more important part of the design than, for example, color. In fact, it helps to simplify the achievement of the user's goals when working with the site.
Unfortunately, some designers do not accurately interpret the essence of the minimalist style. In their work, they do not take into account or get rid of important elements of this style, simplifying their work, and at the same time complicating user interaction with the site.
In order to better understand and apply the principles of minimalism, we must understand the origins of this style and its main characteristics.
What ?
In the simplest sense, the goal of minimalism in web design is to present content in the simplest and most direct way possible for the user. This style often includes the exclusion of a piece of content or feature that doesn't meet the primary goals of the interface.
Although there are still differing opinions about what exactly qualifies web design as a minimalist style. There are several features that accurately define the style of the site as minimalist. These include flat textures, color-limited patterns, and the use of white space.
Characteristics of minimalism
Flat patterns and textures. Used in 96% of websites whose web design can be attributed to minimalism. Over the past few years, there has been a huge shift in design from skeuomorphism towards purely digital representations of things without physical metaphors. Flat interfaces do not use highlights, shadows, gradients. In a word, all those tools that make the interface glossy or three-dimensional. Some designers believe that the flat design trend has grown due to the popularity of minimalist UI in design. These two trends (minimalism and flat design) are extremely compatible. Both do without the use of shadows, gradients and volumetric textures for the sake of simplifying the design, eliminating unnecessary elements.
Flat and minimalism are so similar that sometimes they are mistaken for one style. Flat (flat) style generally refers to textures, icons, or graphics in an interface. Minimalism works with content, its layout. Web design can be flat, but not minimalist.
Limited in number of colors or monochrome palette. Represented in 95% of the sample interfaces. In most minimalist interfaces, color is used strategically to create visual interest or draw the user's attention without creating additional elements or graphics.
Minimalist color palettes are a step away from the bright colors that were popular in web design in the 2000s. In addition, there are many great sites that use only one color in the palette as an accent in order to highlight important elements in the content. These accented elements tend to be interactive.
There are several considerations to keep in mind when using a limited number of colors in a palette:
- Make sure the color scheme has enough contrast to be perceived by people with low vision;
- Use accent colors intentionally and consistently to highlight very important information.
Limited number of items. Used in 87% of the reviewed sites. Specialists who design a site in a minimalist style must determine the appropriateness of using each element in the interface. In case any element has a specific task in the design, it is necessary to get rid of it. This is one of the main difficulties of this style. It is often difficult to determine how necessary this or that element in the design is. The more elements the design contains, the more information users need to understand when interacting with the site.
This is where a designer can move away from the canons of minimalism and stop getting rid of “useful” content.
The maximum amount of empty space. 84% of sites use this tactic. Removing or excluding elements from a web page necessarily leaves empty space. Many designers use this space to "direct" users' attention to important elements.
Using "dramatic" typography. Occurs in 75% of cases. Like color, bold or large print has become another communication tool. Effectively used typography can make up for the absence of other elements (photos, graphics) and make a minimalist design more visually appealing.
Using images for text may allow you to use non-standard fonts, but this will increase site load times. At the same time, it must be remembered that the use of non-standard fonts is justified only if the text conveys important and meaningful information.
Conclusion
Web interface design in the 2000s was predominantly chaotic and overwhelming, which is bad for UX/UI.
The design of the site in the style of minimalism relieves the user of the overload of the interface and allows you to achieve the best indicators of site interactivity. Like flat design is a reaction to skeomorphism, minimalism is a reaction to maximalism in web design. In both cases, it is recommended to strike a balance.
It can often be found in the elements of flat (Flat) layouts or in material design (Material Design). The basic concept and characteristics remain virtually unchanged over time, for example:
- Many people prefer to create projects in predominantly white and black color schemes.
- As a rule, designers leave a lot of free space - especially in the areas around the central image.
- Sans-serif fonts are also used.
The above points are not the main requirements of a minimalist design, but they are quite common and can serve as a kind of style indicator, regardless of the time period.
What is really important in modern minimalism is a special emphasis on one type of content, without competition from other elements. It can be a photo, a logo, or a simple block of text.
Navigation, Contact Information and other objects are almost always less visible in the layout (although they may be present in the view or appear on scroll).
uppertodo.com
Recently, designers are also starting to incorporate animation into these kind of sites, following and wanting to make a web page more "live" and interactive. However, you need to be extremely careful with this. Animation should be unobtrusive, and performed in the same style (colors, font, etc.) as the main design.
Another major trend in minimalism is text size. Performers prefer sharp calibration - super-small or giant lettering with contrasting backgrounds and simple pictures. High contrast is great for creating focus in a simple structure and emphasizing the “right” content.
Benefits of Minimalist Design
Now let's move on to the most interesting, namely, the advantages of this direction and their use in real projects.
1. Lack of tinsel and disorder
What is excessive is not healthy. When creating a layout, it is very easy to get carried away, include everything you can, and as a result get a “bad dish with good ingredients”. As we said above, one of the most important principles of minimalism is not to litter the site with unnecessary objects that the user can do without. Each of the elements can be beautiful and functional on its own, but when they are put together, they become distracting and spoil the overall picture.
motocms.com
The first thing we pay attention to is the contrasting central block and the text header. Further, the eye falls on the categories / services of the company, where the visitor can immediately find what he needs. Nothing extra. Thanks to this, the layout is very popular.
By removing unnecessary details and simplifying it, you get a clean visual picture that is easily perceived by the audience. You will find more similar solutions in our selection.
Along with reducing clutter, a minimalistic design will help you focus on the most important elements of a web page. By making them more visible, you will show site visitors what to pay special attention to, and you can significantly increase the conversion of the project.
3. Increase creativity
The limitations of a minimalist style actually force the designer to be more creative. Most often, it is much more difficult to remove and discard any details so that only the main thing remains in the template. Therefore, search simple solutions for the most effective implementation - this is a rather useful aspect of creativity, which contributes to the development of non-standard thinking of the performer.
4. Usability
Obviously, a layout with fewer elements is much easier to work with. For example, take the social network Facebook - it has a million features, thousands of different items, and quite a few distractions. The average user needs to spend quite a long time to learn how to use the platform and how to behave on it. For many, this is really difficult.
As an alternative, consider something like Tumblr or Instagram. Services also have quite a few features, like any social network, but the functionality becomes clear after a few minutes spent on the site.
The point of this fable is that a minimalistic design (and simple) is guaranteed to make your visitors feel at home and allow them to adapt to the features of a web project much faster.
orendasecurity.com
5. Less coding/development
When creating any template, it is desirable to think about how it will subsequently "work" on a real site. If a web designer forgets about the features of the code and gives himself up to a flight of fancy, which will become a nightmare for a coder, then it does not end well.
On the other hand, making a layout that would avoid unnecessary suffering during its further integration is a great opportunity for the performer to demonstrate his professional skills.
In general, the minimalist style in design is much easier to implement due to its simplicity and structure.
6. Better download speed and cross-browser compatibility
When a visitor goes to a minimalistic site, they can often expect it to work great in any browser. In addition, due to the lack of many images and details, your resource will load much faster, and the content will be easier to perceive. This point is very important both for the overall impression of the web project and for SEO.
belancio.com
7. Helps you focus on content
Despite the active development of the media format, text content is still out of competition. The minimalistic design serves it up perfectly and allows the visitor to focus solely on the content. However, we must not forget that the content of the site should be clear and concise.
Summing up
As you can see, it has a lot of advantages, thanks to which they remain popular regardless of the era and scope. Therefore, when creating your next project, we recommend that you pay attention to given style Special attention. Even if you do not want to use it in its purest form, but simply borrow some principles, it will help you create really high-quality layouts.
And in the TurboBlog guest post. This time we are pleased to offer you material prepared by Julia Solntseva — our freelance writer. In her first article for our blog, Julia shared her own vision of minimalist web design and backed it up with compelling examples. However, it is better to see once than to hear about it a couple of times.
Today, in the commercial art market, the desire for a minimalist form of information presentation is becoming more and more clear. And this trend is nothing new. This is a logical consequence of the development and change of stages in art. Once, in the 60s, minimalism first declared itself as a separate art direction. His appearance is a protest, a reaction to the absolute triumph of expressionism at that time, and especially its exaggerated form - abstract expressionism. 
The modern world is going through various stages of development of Internet technologies. The era of web 1.0 has passed - the whole set of what was and what the Internet consisted of before the advent of web 2.0 technologies, the participants and direct creators of which we are all with you.
Recently, researchers in the development of Internet technologies, led by Jason McCabe Calacanis, the leader of Netscape.com, prophesy us the advent of a new era - web 3.0, the specifics of which, apart from the fact that the Internet will become more socially oriented, they have not been able to formulate. modern web design is impossible without considering the specifics of each stage of web technology and the design that visualized it.
The first stage of design development in the web 1.0 era. were characteristic:
- flashy colors, mostly from the web safe palette;
- ubiquitous yellow;
- incredibly annoying contrast, such as white on blue or red on black;
- a picture instead of a background and, as a result, a complete unreadability of the text;
- the lack of a clear structure of the modular grid, and in especially severe cases - the modular grid itself.
This is what the websites of famous companies looked like in the 90s: 
Designers knew and loved only one font - Comic Sans.But it should be remembered that design has evolved in parallel with Internet technologies. Designers had nowhere and no one to learn from - they were pioneers.
Then, at the turn of the 90s and 2000s, the development of design and graphics led to a race for creativity. Just a couple of years ago, designers tried their best to keep the visitor's attention with visual lures, whether it was an impressive flash or realistic 3D. Abstract forms and a non-standard interface - all this, of course, attracted the user's attention, but at the same time distracted him from the content of the site, in connection with which most sites did not fulfill their primary function - informing. As a result, today the Internet is oversaturated with template creative, which has made many sites of the same type.
It is true what they say: in our time, in order to be different, you need to be simple. And minimalism to some extent meets these requirements. As it used to be in painting, minimalism in web design today is an attempt to pull content out of the information noise, to place accents, to form a clear scheme of perception. Bright design is able to keep the attention of the visitor, minimalist - to direct him in the right direction.
Basic principles of minimalist thinking:
- rejection of the subjectivity of perception;
- rejection of symbolism and metaphorical forms;
- amazing geometric clarity;
- balance of contrasts;
- neutral surfaces, soft textures.
Lazy designer or minimalist designer? How to recognize talent? To form a perception system, minimalist designers use certain methods. More about them.
Minimal use of graphics should not mean its absence. 
Simplifying graphics to a minimum- one of the main techniques of minimalism, while minimalistic graphics should have their own style and semantic message. 
discreet background color, basically - various variations of the combination of black and white, or mostly light colors, which will create a business style of the site and thereby evoke a feeling of trust, reliability, stability, seriousness in users. Highlight important information color. 
Modular Grid Clarity- it is important. Information that has a clear structure is easily perceived and remembered.rnUsing a modular grid and guides will not only make it easier to structure all design elements relative to each other, but will also save a lot of nerves for the layout designer, who will calculate the dimensions of all substrate elements much faster. 
User-friendly navigation. Navigation, simplified to a minimum, will speed up the process of finding information and understanding the structure of the site. This is one of the elementary ways to quickly convey information to the visitor. Web designers often resort to using simple navigation. 
In the truest sense of the word - remove all unnecessary.Less graphics. If you decide to use photographic materials, make them a clear illustration of the type of activity of the company. 
Palette. The correct selection of the palette is very important for the formation of the necessary perception of information. Minimalism is not a synonym for simplicity and dullness, or no color at all, minimalism is a style of presenting information. Art historians give only stylistic advice, and everything else is a matter of the web designer's taste and the customer's preferences. 
Simplifying design, we take out the font in the first place. If a text content for you it is paramount, then the font for design is “king and god”. Experiment not only with types of fonts, but also with intervals, colors. There are a few interesting facts about fonts. Naturally, the designer, working with fonts, wants his site to look original. But the truth is that most of the users who are lucky enough to visit this site have only system fonts, and 99% have fonts Windows systems. So the experiment has its logical limitations, use non-standard fonts where appropriate: logos, inscriptions.
Scope of minimalism in web design As for me, minimalism, in principle, has no restrictions on the scope of its application. But the practice of using this direction has developed in such a way that most often
web designers use this style when creating the following sites:
business card site, portfolio:
Corporate website:
Restrained colors and the rejection of frills, easy navigation, clearly structured information and an emphasis on content will help create a business style.
blog / personal page:
Basically, the principles of designing a blog and a personal page are the same as the principles of designing a website. But there are differences that define the nature of the blogosphere itself: sidebar, simplified navigation, the main place is given to the text. good example, which demonstrates the principles of blog design, can be the style of the Facebook site. Nothing should distract the user from information and communication: 
It should be remembered that when using a minimalist style in design, it is also necessary to take into account the specifics of fonts, color schemes and the corporate identity of the company as a whole.
Of course, the attitude towards minimalism in web design, as well as towards minimalism in art, can be different for different people: from complete admiration to complete rejection. The customer may not like the artist’s new current vision, it may seem to him that the designer simply did nothing, but the fact that the fashion for minimalism is only gaining momentum remains a fact. So, for example, a popular style in architecture and interior design - hi-tech - largely uses minimalist techniques: 
Many photographers prefer this genre of photography, especially Lomographers. Using empty space as the main attribute to attract attention is the main technique of the genre: 
And finally, I would like to voice the motto of minimalist designers, which very well expresses the essence of the minimalist direction in web design - "Doing more with less".