As defined by Wikipedia, “Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features.” In web design minimalism is achieved by removing all non essential elements to the point just before the purpose in your design breaks. Minimalism is meant to be calming and causes the content to stand out as the main focal point.

We often hear the phrase “Less is More” when referring to minimalism design, however, I prefer the phrase "Less is Better". Typically minimalism uses relatively simple elegant designs. The elements used in the design are typically comprised of quality elements rather than quantity. The beauty of the design is often determined by lighting, basic geometric shapes such as outlines, using a single shape or a small number of like shapes for design unity, using non-fuzzy bright color combinations, natural textures and colors, and clean and fine finishes. The designer should pay special attention to the connection between perfect plains, lighting, and void spaces.

Below I will discuss some basic principals of minimalist website design. These are not hard and fast principals and I encourage you to use your own style when persuing a minimalist design.

White Space

White space (whitespace) often called "Negative Space" is an important principal in manamalist web design. White space is the space (not necessiarily white) between elements on your site. Adding more white space can make the website easier to read, add balance and harmony in the layout, look more elegant and upscale, appearing to be higher quality, and add a feeling of sophistication. Less whitespace = cheap; more whitespace = luxury.

Typography

When designing a website sexy typography can enhance the design and effectiveness of the site's communication. Typography is not just choosing a font. Choosing a color that contrasts well with background is very important. Make sure the type contrast allows the font to stand out. The type size is equally important because this determines the ease of reading the text. You want to make sure the type is easliy visable on smaller monitors. In addition, varying type size to quickly identify hierarchy will let your readers know the important sections of your page. Use larger type size to identiry the important sections of the page and differentiate the type size for content hierarchy. As we said before white space is on the page will help the reader focus attention on the text, where the line height space will make the paragraph easier to read. As a general rule of thumb the line height should be set to at least 140% of your text size.

Color

Color plays an important role in effective manamalist web design. For example, picture a page with black font on a white page. Add a spash of red on that page and the color itself becomes the focal point of the page.

Images

Like color, effective use of images can quickly become the focus of your page. Carfully position images within whitespace to make these images stand out. The effective use of images can make a huge impact on your visitors.

Balance and Symmetry

While whitespace color and typography play a big part of minimalism designers should pay particular attention to fundamental design principals. Balance, alignment and contrast are most important. To read more about basic design principals visit The Principal of Design.