I saw a similar line in a post I read recently and it has echoed in my thoughts ever since. More and more clients are asking me to simplify their brands and designs recently, and if they ask for the opposite I try to educate and convert them to the minimalist approach during the creative stage of a project. It’s something I have often had to fight for in the various design teams I have been a part of, but I have always seen the value in getting rid of the unnecessary and irrelevant, and luckily for me it has been difficult to argue with the reasoning that something is irrelevant, redundant and adds no value to a page or design.
It has been challenging though, for some reason some people just want to fill every little area of white space on a web page, I’ve never understood it, filling in gaps just for the sake of it. Maybe they think they will be missing an opportunity to sell or communicate something if they leave an area blank, if this is the case why not look at the bigger picture, why isn’t this being achieved in the first place? Number one reason for selling something more than anyone else? Price. Number one reason for communicating something better than anyone else, choice of designer, just kidding, or am I?
Lets look at the worlds most visited web page, Google.com, see any clutter, any “click here for this” and “Welcome to Google”? Nope, just the logo, search box and a few links. In fact Google recently took it upon themselves to simplify there homepage even more. Now if you go to Google.com not moving your mouse you will notice the various links don’t appear, move your mouse and voila, its a nice little touch and a great example of removing unnecessary things from a web page with the added bonus of a reveal if required.
The same can be said for HTML and CSS. The more I learn, the less I use, or at least the less I want to use. I always look for ways of being more efficient with my code, looking at how I can style pages using the html elements rather than creating classes or ID’s, getting rid of div’s and span’s, it’s all part of the challenge and it’s what can make designing and coding so satisfying. The minimalist approach seems to rise above the normal web design trends and that can only be a good thing, why else would it survive the continually evolving aesthetic that is the web? It’s design evolving, more and more designs are going simpler, more clients want minimal, straight to the point web sites that get the point across without wasting the users precious time.
The time people are spending reading web pages is decreasing, we don’t have enough time, we are hungry and want to consume information at a higher rate. Why waste time with irrelevant information, users are driven by purpose and the quicker we get them to their ‘purpose’ the more they appreciate our sites and brands. Even better if you can convince users of what their purpose is, and then get them to it, you have a winner and a business model. Design being minimal is linked to users becoming commodities, web sites and brands want to keep you on their site, they don’t want to annoy you with irrelevant information or irrelevant steps to get to that information and risk losing you to a competitor, but removing everything on your site isn’t the quick fix, it has to look good and be consistent with the brand you are trying to build, otherwise all the sites on the web would be text only and black and white, and none of us want that, especially me.
All very true Darren. It’s an approach I often try with my clients, but as you know, clients have their own view on how the web works. I do think there is still a lot of unnecessary visual elements to most designs I come across but that is what makes them unique, so maybe they aren’t unnecessary after all in that respect.
I think this works well unless you want to sell something. We have found customers like to be well informed and that means ‘more is more’ for content based around selling something. Same for SEO, the more content the better in my view.