Minimalism is Mandatory

Last week I caught an article on minimalism and although it was a decent read, it made me feel as though the term minimalism gets used improperly when it comes to web design. I think the idea that many people have of minimalism is that there is nothing on a site, but some text. Maybe there is an image or two, but what you get is usually a black & white site that offers a nice, clean grid structure which pleases the eye.

In some cases this is true, that is what a minimalist design is for that site. However, to really understand the essence of minimalism we have to understand what are the most important elements to a site. Once that is established, you should see why every site should deploy a minimalist design.

What is Important to a Site

Every site has a purpose and it is this purpose that should always be the focus when designing a website. No matter how stupid or insane that purpose may be, without a purpose, the site has no reason to exist (the purpose of a site is to have a purpose?). The goal of the designer is to make sure that purpose is portrayed to the audience in the best way possible. To do that, the designer must make sure that nothing is distracting the user away from discovering that purpose.

Once the audience is removed from the purpose of the site, the site has no meaning to them and they leave to never come back. If you remember the first iterations of the Twitter home page then you may recall how many times you would hear someone say they didn't understand the point of the site. You might have been one of those people, I know I was for a while. The reason for this is because the design of Twitter led you to believe that Twitter was about letting other people know what you are up to, when in fact, the purpose has been to communicate and establish relationships with others. Now the site design is built around this idea of communication and more and more people are starting to see the usefulness behind the site.

Some might not consider the site to be minimalist, but to me it is exactly that. My reasoning? It drives the purpose of the site home to the user, without adding anything unnecessary. What about the blue color and the graphics, don't they take away from the minimalist ideal? I don't think so, because part of the purpose of Twitter is to show it is a fun community type place. It can be hard to create that feeling among your audience simply through a black & white site with a block of text.

Drawar is Not Minimalist

I am usually told that my designs have a certain feel to them and I can only assume that it is because I don't use many graphics and I primarily stick to the same colors. However, if you read the requirements for minimalism stated above, then Drawar fails miserably at them. The purpose of this site is to showcase a community that loves to talk about design. In almost no way does the design suggest that and therefore to me it isn't minimalist at all. Bare maybe, but minimalistic no. That is another thing to keep in mind, don't mistake bare for minimalism. Bare is usually unattractive, boring and elicits no emotion from the user.

When you are looking at a design and see some great graphical work that might include icons, gradients and drop shadows, don't assume the site isn't minimalistic because of it. Hopefully, the designer saw a reason to put in those elements and it was more than just because he likes to use them. Every good designer can justify why an element of a design is put in the place that it is and that justification should follow the purpose of the site. Often designers like to blame clients for a horrible design, but many times they neglect the fact that there are a ton of designs out there that failed because of the designer's need to do more than was necessary. How many times do you hear someone say they love that overly designed site?

To Find Heaven

A conflict that arises between a website and its audience is that the site may not share the same purpose as the audience. For example, with news sites, the purpose to the company may be to offer a comprehensive view of the news in every industry possible all on one page. If that is the case, then many of them do the job very well because they have over 3000px of news and it doesn't get more comprehensive than that. To the audience however, the purpose of the site may be to get the news in a clear and concise way that doesn't distract from that purpose. In that case, the majority of these sites fail.

The New York Times Skimmer was used by me as a good example of a news site. You could say that they should take the images away to make it a truly minimalistic site. However, the images help to break up the constant flow of text which would make it harder to skim the news and without them the site loses its minimalist definition because it doesn't do the best job it could serving the purpose of the audience.

One of the hardest aspect of designs is trying to take a complex idea and presenting it in a way that the audience can understand. This is why a minimalist design is so hard to achieve for many. The ability to take away from a design and only show what is needed to portray the right idea is a skill that not many have. The great designers are able to do this, while the rest like to pretend that stripping a site of its colors and images is doing the right thing.

Do yourself a favor and go look at a site you designed and go over every element and ask yourself why it is there. You might be surprised at how many of your answers have nothing to do with the actual purpose of the site.