There really seems a return to the minimal in design lately, something I’m more than happy to see after the gradient madness of the last year or so. I’m seeing more and more new designs coming out where less is really more. Galleries seem to be once again brimming full of powerful minimal design, it’s a refreshing change. In part minimal design never went away it seems now the focus is coming back to it though as it rightly deserves as one of the most effective and often hardest to achieve design styles. So, what does make a minimal design?

Whitespace is your friend

When I refer to whitespace this is of course space on the design and not in the literal sense. I see this is a key point of minimal design. The design is allowed to breathe and attention take with and element used and it’s relation in space to another. Margins and padding are a key to any successful minimal design. Often it’s a good idea to keep to a group of 10 rule with these, such as margins of 10, 20 or 40. A really good method is to have the outside ones larger and as you visually go ‘into’ the design reduce the spacing - you can also use lower and higher spacing to bring the eye onto elements that deserve more attention.

Success is in the small

Minimal design is most successful when it sees more of a focus on the small details rather than the large. Having breathing room in your design leads to enable other elements to take more of the focus. Some of the most successful minimal designs I’ve seen have one or two feature elements. From a navigation style through to a text treatment, these are the twists that take it beyond looking just unfinished. Often this on a blog could be the navigation and form styling. Form styling is one key area where a minimal design can bring usability and high end design.

Text focus

One of the key detail areas in minimal design is text. From line-heights to using font sizes and styling to accent areas of the design - text is your key visual element. Just by adding a simple border, line-height or subtle background you can focus elements on the page and bring the design up a notch. I like the use of blockquote in minimal design along with headers, to give another level of depth to the design.

Editing minimally

When working on a minimal design you really have to focus on editing your design. Often the first version will be less minimal and you get to the minimal core by editing and removing treatments. This design simmering is just like cooking as you are reducing it to the essence of the design as you work on it. Rather than more complex designs the key is removal.

Why minimal?

I’ve looked at a few essentials that make a minimal design, but why would you want to style minimal? Minimal designs really do chant the ‘content is king’ mantra. They focus on the information / delivery of the page rather than a visual wow. In return the message and design itself is often more powerful. It is a careful line to walk though, far to easily a minimal design can end up just looking unfinished. This is where paying more attention to the small things and getting pixel perfect is the key to a successful minimal design. Perhaps the prevalence of minimal design currently is in part a reaction to the over design we’ve seen with the fabled web 2.0. Personally, I find it refreshing and I’m looking to work on this site with a return to more minimal roots with it’s format. I’ve always felt minimal designs work wondefully on blogs and in many respects kept that in mind with the many flavours of this one. With my next design which is being worked on I want to take that to the next level and constrain back all elements that I use.