Great design is not just about conveying the right amount of information. There’s more to creating a perfect website than experimenting with visuals and sound. Designers need to think about how every element on the website impacts the user experience. Minimalism is one of the most popular styles of web design. It enables designers to make attractive and effective websites more functional. The less the clutter and confusion on the page, the easier it is to navigate. So, what is functional minimalism then? Many web designers are convinced that minimalism is all about aesthetics. But, the underlying ideas of minimalistic design are much deeper. In fact, the history of minimalistic design begins with Japanese culture. Japan has long focused on balancing simplicity and beauty in everything including architecture, interior design and graphics design. After years of cluttered and complicated web pages, with difficult navigation and overwhelming information and clashing graphics, web designers are now shifting to minimalistic design.
Brands have quickly adopted minimalistic designs and fell in love with white space, simple navigation and bold text. While new trends in web design keep stepping in, designers still prefer minimalistic designs and explore the essential rules of functional minimalism.
Only the essentials
First designers need to ensure that they’re concentrating only on the elements in the page really need to be there. Remove anything that does not support the end goals. Any pictures, background noise, buttons, navigation features that aren’t going to support the user experience and will distract the users from taking actual action.
Negative space is positive!
Negative space is one of the fundamental elements of good minimalistic web design. Note that every part of the website doesn’t need to be filled with noise. White or negative space can help give viewers some space to understand and take action. Design elements such that they are carefully spaced out, labelled and waiting to be discovered.
Simplify the navigation
Never hide the navigation. It is a good idea to keep it simple. You should concentrate on helping visitors to accomplish tasks as quickly as possible without distraction. Rather than overwhelming your audience with huge selection of clicks, designers should concentrate on helping visitors to accomplish simple tasks and achieve their goals without distractions. One of the biggest problems in design is – choice overload. Whether in a store or on a website, you are never sure what to do first – as a designer, functional minimalism can help you make it obvious what your audience should do next.
Simplify the navigation
Never hide the navigation. It is a good idea to keep it simple. You should concentrate on helping visitors to accomplish tasks as quickly as possible without distraction. Rather than overwhelming your audience with huge selection of clicks, designers should concentrate on helping visitors to accomplish simple tasks and achieve their goals without distractions. One of the biggest problems in design is – choice overload. Whether in a store or on a website, you are never sure what to do first – as a designer, functional minimalism can help you make it obvious what your audience should do next.
Design the top of the page carefully
Functional minimalism helps designers to capture attention of the audience from the moment they land on your website. At the top of the page, offer the most relevant content that keeps the audience interested and gives them the information they need.
In short, minimalism isn’t just an aesthetic choice. It is a design trend that simplifies interfaces by eliminating unnecessary elements and reducing content that doesn’t support the end goal. Remember – the focus should be on a combination of aesthetics and usability to create powerful designs for businesses.
