With the increasing use of smartphones, minimalism has been on the rise. Minimalism draws additional benefits to websites and apps in the form of fast loading times and excellent compatibility between screen sizes.

Beautiful minimalist applications integrated with incredible usability are impressive; a simple app that can be easily navigated is a very effective form of good communication.

What is Minimalism?

Minimalism, which is the art of doing more or expressing more with less, is a popularly known modern design approach used in simplifying web or apps interfaces by removing excessive elements.

There are numerous ways in which minimalism can be implemented. These include navigation, color experimentation, transitions, broken composition, or the complete removal of all elements.

Benefits of Minimalism

Just in case you are wondering, what the benefits of minimalism are, here are a few of them.

• Minimalism is trendy, which makes it a valuable element to include in your website design.
• Minimalist sites are easy to make responsive.
• With fewer objects on the web page, minimalist sites load faster.
• Minimalism enables users to focus all their attention on the service or product you sell.
• It makes navigation intuitive.

Even though minimalist sites are easy to create and maintain, you will need to avoid the following mistakes that some experienced designers also tend to make.

Making products that look incomplete because they don’t think through the design thoroughly.
Hiding crucial navigation buttons in favor of minimalism, making the interface clunky and confusing while preventing a smooth user experience

The Best Practices for Minimalist Website Design

There are some practices that can assist you in creating stunning minimalist applications, websites, and other digital products. Below are some of these practices.

1. Use whitespace or negative space

Whitespace, also called negative space (a more appropriate term used in designing), is the space that is between components in a composition. Some benefits attributed to using whitespace are stated below.

• It boosts the user experience and focuses attention on the webpage content and your product.
• It adds balance to a design.
• By being aware of what occupies the space between your site’s main content blocks, you can make your website captivate readers, enticing them to scroll further and stay longer. Making use of whitespace is one of the major tricks to a minimalist style.

You can make elements more obvious by simply increasing the whitespace or negative space around them.

2. Use of bright colors

Implementing bright colors in minimalism can be complicated even though they are fun to behold. Colorful backgrounds scream for attention and can easily capture the user’s gaze. However, too much vivid color can take the background from captivating to irritating.

When making use of bright colors, ensure you mix them up with more toned-down, soothing, corresponding colors. Include some black or white typography. Doing this will enable you to have a glamorous, bright product. Also, try to avoid complicated animations, funky fonts, and harsh transitions between content blocks.

3. Be creative with fonts

Gorgeous bold fonts are one of the major trends in the arena of web design. You can be as creative as you wish here. You just need to ensure that the font is clear and easy to read and that it also catches your user’s attention.

When it comes to minimalism, the efficient usage of typography can compensate for the limited usage of animations and imagery, making your site visually attractive. Use fonts in the creation of hierarchy, informing your visitors of what is important and also assisting them to navigate the web pages.

It is essential to keep in mind that fonts are displayed on smartphones in a way that will reflect the entire usability of your product. “Sans Serif” font style is one of the best choices when it comes to building a minimalist website because this font style is crispy and clean to behold.

When there aren’t various elements on the web page, the font size is another major element of minimalist design. Making use of small fonts can be an incredible way of illustrating information without the use of much space. However, you need to be careful as small text can get lost easily on the web page, and this will make the design seem distracting and dirty.

4. Set up navigation

The major means of creating a minimalist vibe is to discard everything that is deemed to be excess. However, some designers can go extreme by removing most of the website’s navigation buttons. Ensure that you don’t hide instruments, buttons, or links that are important to your users.

The “menu” button should be left enriched, while the rest of the navigation buttons can be fixed into it. You can hide the “homepage” button inside the company logo. You should also ensure that the buttons are highlighted in a way that your users can know the buttons are clickable.

5. Carefully select images

Beautiful images have a powerful influence on people. This is the reason why there is a whole industry committed to designing.

Make use of bright and large HD photos to build an emotional connection between your users and your website. However, remember that images should not only be used as decorations but should also exhibit whatever service or product you are offering.

6. Add small details

Designers test and change the conventional view on minimalist sites by simply adding minor details. These can be non-functional elements that are used to attract the user’s attention.

Fragments, geometric objects, underlining, and flying decorative signs are fast becoming increasingly important as they add something unique to the design.

Small details can be used as an ingredient of decor for typography and images. There are times they follow the mouse pointer or scrolling, attracting attention. Whenever you want to add small details, add in a way that it doesn’t interfere with navigation.

Conclusion

For a long time, minimalist design has been among the most outstanding design approaches, and it is likely for this trend to continue. Designers always enjoy going for minimalism, changing from content excesses and some other heavier designs.

At first glance, minimalism is simple, but to make it user-friendly and light, you need to carefully and thoroughly think each element through. You should never sacrifice usability for the sake of visuals; categorize your content and try to develop a more creative path across the website.