When I was 11 and I first started writing HTML (before I even know CSS was a thing), I naturally made some very simple pages and sites. Luckily, I quickly discovered that instead of making it too complex, I can just say it’s “minimal”. My ventures into Photoshop and dabbling in digital art tended to stray in the same direction. As time went on, my skills evolved (finally figured out what CSS was), and this eventually became part of my profession, I still found myself tending to prefer websites, designs, and apps that had generous use of whitespace, only the essential elements, thin typefaces, etc. Luckily, the rest of the world seemed to prefer this style too.

It can be argued that some use the cover of “minimalism” to an extreme to mask laziness or inexperience. While I don’t disagree that could be true in certain cases, I think that when used properly, it is a style in which you’re forced to be more creative by the aesthetic constraints. There are also some technical considerations — it’s a quicker load time if you keep things simple, it can be easier to create a responsive layout across platforms, etc.

Some of the best designs and websites have been minimal ones.

I tend to think of it like this: if you can boil something down to its essential parts, and you can no longer remove anything else without severely compromising functionality or the main message, then you have the best possible baseline to work from. Each complication has the potential to distort the message or cause an unpleasant user experience.

That’s not to say you should just make everything barebones and call it a day — since a designer with a knowledge of visual hierarchy could produce an arrangement of elements that are much more pleasing and usable than a novice working with the same starting point.

A minimal design is also one where minor adjustments have major impact. The choice of one typeface over the other and the choice of positioning of certain elements, while not unimportant in more complex designs, are magnified in their effect here. Therefore, you’re also forced to make sure everything is perfect, since you can’t hide any mistakes.

With the trend of minimal structure and heavy visuals present in apps and websites, oftentimes a finished product will look like there’s not really much there, at least at first glance. A finished and live site can look like just a few navigation links and some high-res photos. If the designer knew what they were doing, everything should be perfectly in its place, and the experience should be seamless. After all, even Google has their motto of “KISS”, or “Keep It Simple, Stupid”.

I’m head of Digital Strategy at FOMO Studio, where a lot of our work can be considered minimal.