Minimal web design

[Guest]

What do others on this forum think of minimal website design? Mine is now as minimal as I can make it, with no colours, images, embedded video or soundfiles - to see or hear something a link has to be clicked. I really like this website which I think is all that is needed:

https://zenhabits.net

I aim for web designs that look like typed A4 pages or early internet message boards.

[Zukan]

Mmm, not sure I like the bare design concept. Looks like a text document.

I do like some colour on a site but more importantly symmetry seems to agree with my way of thinking. I am sure I am wrong in this as web design isn't my forte.

[Guest]

Minimal can be good. Minimal can also be annoying.

i.e.

https://www.vincentsaisset.com/

[Guest]

Minimal can be good. Minimal can also be annoying.

i.e.

https://www.vincentsaisset.com/

Agreed: I really dislike the almost contemptuous minimal design of that website and the moving graphics, I like web pages to be static, not video art. The usability is abysmal, I still haven't managed to get to the website itself.

[Dr Huge Longjohns]

Depends what it's for. If you want to drive traffic to it you need, sadly, to conform to Google's latest SEO recommendations so their bots rank it well.

[BigRedX]

AFAICS there isn't a website as such. Just a scrolling display of animation "skills" with contact details at the bottom - although a lot of it is fairly easy to do with Adobe Muse.

[Folderol]

it also crashed my browser

[Guest]

I quite like this kind of approach. What do you think?

https://www.majortom.com/

[Folderol]

I quite like this kind of approach. What do you think?

https://www.majortom.com/

It's puff pastry (as my old mum would have said). Looks pretty but there's nothing there. It also runs up one of the cores on my machine to 65%

[Eddy Deegan]

I quite like this kind of approach. What do you think?

https://www.majortom.com/

It's puff pastry (as my old mum would have said). Looks pretty but there's nothing there. It also runs up one of the cores on my machine to 65%

Agreed. A site which forces you to navigate at its speed rather than yours is very annoying! It is basically saying 'sit there and watch while I show off a bit'. There are plenty of sites that do that (and much better!) as their main purpose already.

Edit: I also have an intense dislike of sites that hijack the scroll function to act as a means to progress through their various dances.

[Agharta]

I quite like this kind of approach. What do you think?
https://www.majortom.com/

I'm with Bill Hicks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaD8y-CGhMw

[Forum Admin]

OP - sorry, minimal text not my cup of tea. I'd rather have a busy site and then make my own choice of using Safari's Reader function to remove ads etc for more minimal look.

I like a site to have plenty of content, and that includes words of course with images (picture being worth 1,000 words) and especially hierarchy in the content. The Major Tom site is awful.

Form over Function in design is never right in my book. In all walks of life: architecture, cooking, clothes, cars... etc.

[Drew Stephenson]

It comes down to what you're trying to do with the site.

I have no idea whom I'm misquoting, but with design everything should be as simple as possible but no simpler.

I can see two good examples on the desk next to me:

An early ipod with the screen and circular dial. Lovely piece of work: neat, functional, minimalist but easy to use. Form following function but adding a style of its own.

On the same desk an iMac of a couple of years of age. Looks lovely but to get to the USB sockets requires dislocating your wrist to reach the back of the machine - ditto the headphone socket. Absolute triumph of form over function from that respect.

[Guest]

I quite like this kind of approach. What do you think?

https://www.majortom.com/

It's puff pastry (as my old mum would have said). Looks pretty but there's nothing there. It also runs up one of the cores on my machine to 65%

Let us not forget, however, that sometimes puff pastry sits atop a fine pie.

[CS70]

What do others on this forum think of minimal website design? Mine is now as minimal as I can make it, with no colours, images, embedded video or soundfiles - to see or hear something a link has to be clicked. I really like this website which I think is all that is needed:

https://zenhabits.net

I aim for web designs that look like typed A4 pages or early internet message boards.

Simplicity requires a lot of effort. In my y $.10 it's not bad, but you can do better with fonts, sizes and layout. Like it is now, it seems just like a modern site where you've not put a great deal of effort in. It works, of course, if that's the impression you want to give - that you aren't really interested.

I aim for web designs that look like typed A4 pages or early internet message boards.

Hm, your site is not like those used to be. It's way too fancy

For example:

- the different sans-serif fonts were not really viable back in the times. That usage alone screams 2010s.

- the bar in the bottom with the two colons and the posher font, it's magazine design, a language that back then had not yet been applied to web sites (and for good reasons: it was too heavy for the average network bandwidth and HTML didn't offer any mechanism for precise positioning (and what was there was very cluncky and heavy to use).

- the nice justification in the middle of the screen, is also a typical magazine design, and it was seriously hard (if possible at all) to implement mid- and late 90s.

If u want early website, your stuff should look like
https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/uploaded/web-design-history/w3c-org.png or Craigslist, assuming you don't want the cheesy "posh" look of times (low color depth images and image maps).

A cool text-only one is for example http://www.bold.studio/

[Folderol]

I quite like this kind of approach. What do you think?

https://www.majortom.com/

It's puff pastry (as my old mum would have said). Looks pretty but there's nothing there. It also runs up one of the cores on my machine to 65%

Let us not forget, however, that sometimes puff pastry sits atop a fine pie.

Careful You could easily start WW3 based on what constitutes a real pie

[Drew Stephenson]

[Folderol]

Exactly!

[Guest]

I quite like this kind of approach. What do you think?

https://www.majortom.com/

It's puff pastry (as my old mum would have said). Looks pretty but there's nothing there. It also runs up one of the cores on my machine to 65%

Let us not forget, however, that sometimes puff pastry sits atop a fine pie.

Careful You could easily start WW3 based on what constitutes a real pie

Anyone knows the answer to that is Leek and Ham of course!

[Guest]

Here are some more minimal designs I like:

https://twnsnd.co

https://www.alessandroscarpellini.it
(although I prefer black text on a white background.)

http://strangebeautiful.net

[Folderol]

Those are better, but the last one seems to make quite heavy use of javascript, which is hardly 'minimal'!

I did post my own site some years ago on the 'Show us your sites' thread as an example of minimalist design. It's also quite dated (but that suits me). It does what it I want, and is incredibly easy to maintain and update, being pure hand-crafted HTML4 + CSS with no added crud. It is also fast

If anyone is interested it is here.