The ‘Less is More’ or Minimalistic Approach to Web Design

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Design is something that can easily make or break a blog. It is one of the most important things a blogger can and should care about.

The most prominent and reputable approach to good, and usable design is the ‘less is more’ ideology.

Less is More and the 80/20 Rule

I like to say that 80 percent of the clutter comes from 20 percent of the items on the page. The ‘less is more’ theory advocates this.

The more items you have on a page, the more stuffy the page looks and the clutter increases. And as clutter increases, the concentration rate of readers decreases, and your content becomes lost in the crowd.

Why?

Education experts (and pretty much everyone) advise that a person should choose a quiet place for study. Why? So that the concentration and focus of the person is laser targeted at the material that they are studying, and not taken away by other, unnecessary things. If that person

Just stripping everything off your blog doesn’t make the design ‘minimalistic’

chose to study in a public place for example, happenings in the surroundings, such as the horns of cars and the chatter of pedestrians would divide his attention up, and make it very hard for him to concentrate on study.

It’s the same with web design. The more items a page has, the more ‘distractors’ there are to distract people from the thing which is important: the content! Good web designs (and designer) take this ‘less is more’ approach to heart. The main, important thing is the content of the blog, and these designs make sure that reader attention is wholly focused on the content.

Such designs are called ‘minimalistic’ designs.

Minimalism Does NOT Mean ‘Nothing’

Perhaps the greatest misconception about minimalism is that you should strip your blog bare of everything, except the content. This is wrong and stupid.

Just stripping everything off your blog doesn’t make the design ‘minimalistic’. Well it does make it minimal in the literal sense, but then, that would make your blog like a bare colourless ‘terms and conditions’ kind of document, that no one wants to read.

There are other important usability and reader friendly standards too that one should follow, and that are the ‘pillars’ of a good design. This leads us to the important decision of what to include and what not to include in your minimalistic design

Defining Goals

A minimalistic design should ideally contain as less items as possible, while not compromising on usability and standards. You cannot strip a blog of navigation, just to save some space. That compromises on usability. Don’t do that.

The best way is to plan out the elements of the design. There are several things that improve user experience, such as a ‘popular posts’ section in the sidebar, that you should keep in your design. But then, it all boils down to what’s important.

Plan out your design. Decide what items are important enough to be incorporated into the design. Keep this to a minimal number.

For example, you might choose to include a ‘popular posts’, and ‘recent posts’ section in your sidebar. That’s perfectly alright, because that might interest your readers in your blog’s archives too.

Also, just because you have a minimalistic design, doesn’t mean that you cannot use images in your posts. Images help give your words dimension, and depth, and break monotony. After all, there are many things you just cannot say in words…

Experiment

Another way to decide the best combination of elements for your design is to experiment with different combinations. Stay with one scheme for, say a week, and the next week use another. Ponder over the results, and then use these results to create the design that’s perfect for you.

Your Thoughts?

Does your blog have a minimalistic design? What are your priorities when it comes to good blog design? We’d love to know!

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