Nikka Estefani
Category: Design Tips
Minimalism, as website design, is often either underrated or misunderstood. If anything, we are wowed with the motto “Less is more” without really understanding or knowing how to apply it.
Minimalism is not all about reducing the design to its very dull or boring form. Some designers, in an attempt to be minimal, create or choose a template that is so dull and boring – white background, ugly font choice, and color scheme. Instead of creating a minimalist design, they created a total wreck design that needs to go back to the drawing board!
So, what is minimalism? In a few words, it’s all about simplicity and emphasis on the content. Instead of using fancy plugins and other design schemes, the content will speak for the website – and the minimal design will just complement it.
The better way of understanding this is by simply looking at the examples. Here are the top 10 minimalist websites for your design inspiration needs:
1) The Minimalists
Let us begin with a website that actually stands up to the name. The Minimalists, as the name already suggests, is a blog centered on minimalism. The blog’s color scheme is white/black/grey, but it’s far from dull and boring.
It only proves that a site can be beautiful and even sleek just by these “plain” color scheme.
2) LLI Design
One of the benefits of minimalism is that it creates a sleek and elegant design. Aside from minimalists themselves, the typical adopters of minimalism are anyone aiming for a sleek and elegant look – usually, these are the luxury item stores, real estate, money, fashion, etc. LLI Design is one of those examples.
LLI Design is an interior design service business, and they elegantly showcase their services by combining minimalist design with the beautiful photos of their portfolio. It’s just one way to use minimalism in your design!
3) Squarespace
You probably already know Squarespace by now – it’s the website builder often advertised by some YouTube channels.
Aside from being one of the great website builders around, Squarespace also incorporates a minimalist design – it is not your typical white/black color scheme, but minimalism is not limited to that color scheme. You can use another color scheme and still achieve a minimalist design.
4) Intersection (Advertising Agency)
Intersection, an advertising agency, shows another example of what a minimalist design can do: create a vintage-era vibe. Well, this isn’t much of a surprise: vintage and old photos are typically black-and-white to begin with!
But Intersection did something more impressive: incorporate design into their mission-vision.
Intersection’s main mission is to create authenticity in their advertising projects. That’s why unlike other advertising agency websites, which uses colorful and fancy design, Intersection used minimalism for their website instead.
5) Dodge and Burn
Dodge and Burn is a photography website, and it uses a minimalist design to emphasize its photography – typically, vintage photography.
Aside from photos, they sell t-shirts – usually, camera designs – as part of their homage to the 1950s and 1970s camera, such as the Leica rangefinders and 1970’s Nikon.
6) Mercer Tavern
Mercer Tavern is a restaurant website that uses attractive food pictures to show its menu. Instead of listing their menu, they simply employ big pictures and icons – some clickable if you need more information, such as the “Menu” picture.
The lesson: big, beautiful pictures could be enough for your website!
7) Tinker
Tinker Watches is another example on how to use minimalism for sleek and elegant design.
With a white/black color scheme and beautifully captured photos of different watches, Tinker is able to create a minimalist and elegant website design.
8) Siiimple
Siiimple is a minimalist CSS gallery that curates and features the most beautiful websites around – many of which are minimalist as well!
You may not run a website-curating website, but Siiimple’s design can also be applied in portfolio websites such as photography and interior design websites.
9) Symbolset
Symbolset uses a thoroughly minimalist design to showcase their main content – icons. It is so minimalist you can’t help but look at the icons they showcase!
10) Philip House
Another example of applying minimalism to real estate is Philip House. And as always, minimalist real estate websites often depict their units in an elegant way, which is why minimalism is often chosen in design.
Conclusion
Minimalism is more than just being simple. As you can see, you can apply minimalism to show elegance and sleekness.
Minimalism also has a functional use. When you eliminated the fancy design and plugins, it will be easier for your visitors to navigate your website.
Using pictures is also a great way in complementing your minimalist design – aside from aesthetic purposes, which is the typical use of pictures, you can use pictures for functionality’s purposes – take for example how Mercer Tavern used their pictures.
Overall, the goal of minimalism is to emphasize what you really want to show in the first place – your content!
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