What to Know About Minimal Web Design

What to Know About Minimal Web Design

You may have heard the saying “less is more,” and recently, that seems to be the case for web design. One of the biggest misconceptions about minimal web design is that it requires less effort and creativity. However, this is not the case. In fact, it may take you more time to cut out any frills, strip it down to the necessities, and share your message in a concise way.

The first step to having a minimalistic web design is to understand what your website’s focus is. Are you starting a blog? Do you want to sell your handmade jewelry? Or maybe you want to review all of the Marvel movies? The possibilities are endless! Figuring out what purpose your website serves is the first thing you should do before you think about your design.

Next, you will need to realize what is crucial to the design on your website. This includes what information is necessary and seeing what structures are important for your website.

In order to achieve your minimalist web design, you will actually have to build up to take away instead of building until anything you add is no longer necessary. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a French writer, once said: “you can only achieve perfection when nothing is left to take away and not when you have nothing more to add.”

Taking that advice into account, you should build a full website and then begin to take design elements away that aren’t necessary. Once you can’t take away anything else due to necessity, you have your minimalistic web design.

Something to keep in mind when creating your minimalistic web design is that you can get creative with color! People tend to think that just because they are working on a minimalist design means that they are confined to black and white coloring. This is certainly not the case. You must be both creative and intelligent in how you use colors for your web design.  It will be worthwhile if you play around with different palettes in order to create the perfect one. You can utilize color to attract the visitor to the most pertinent information as well as set the tone of the website with a continuous background color.

With a minimal design, less emphasis is placed on the frills and extras of your design and more emphasis is placed on your type. Typography is huge and can allow you to show your creative side in a simple way. Plus, you can focus more on unique aspects of typeface, such as the style, weight, leading, and spacing of the letters used to communicate your content.

Lastly, you can use negative space to your advantage. Yes, that blank space can actually be of use! Utilize that space to bring out the most important information you want to get across to your visitors. The more negative space surrounding a photo or piece of information, the more people will be drawn to it.

Achieving a minimal web design is no easy task, but with the right thought process and a little bit of practice, you’ll be able to get your website up and running in no time.