How to have a Minimalist Design Approach?
Updated: Jun 16, 2021
Why does the Minimalist approach of designing has a huge market today and how to master it?
With designing trends evolving at a rapid rate, Minimalism has grown to be one of the most influential and sought-after approaches among artists. The reason clearly being the surpassing elegance of the Minimalist style of designing.
What is Minimalism?
To come to learn or polish your skills of minimalist designing, the first step is to understand what Minimalism is all about.
The famous motto of “Less is More” is what precisely sums up the extensive concept of Minimalism. Following the elimination of decorative, figurative, and representational elements, Minimalism focuses on the textural and material elements in the authentic intellectual form. In plain words, it is about steering clear of the unnecessary and spotlighting the simple, useful, and elegant.
Minimalism originates from the idea of stripping things down to their minimum without losing their essential purpose and identity. It is not just about keeping things simple, it is about targeting the observer’s attention to the important, relevant, and worthwhile by getting rid of all kinds of distractions.
What is Minimalism in Designing?
Now that the concept of Minimalism is done with, it is time to take a gander at how Minimalist thinking unfolded in Designing.
The author of the motto “Less is More”, the famous German architect, and a considered hero of Minimalism, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) incorporated simplicity and clarity in his work. He used contemporary construction materials such as steel and plate glass. While designing infrastructure, he focused on reducing structural frameworks to a minimum and including a lot of open space.
All his principles are still in use in this day and age.
Below is one of Rohe’s famous works, the Barcelona Pavilion in Barcelona, constructed in 1929 for the world exposition.
A Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg led the De Stijl (Dutch for “The Style”) movement that began in 1917 and dissolved around 1931 with the death of Doesburg in the same year. This movement espoused designing principles like simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions. It also regulated the use of only primary colours apart from black and white.
Below is one of Doesburg’s most famous works, Composition in Gray (Rag time), produced in 1919.
Why is Minimalism in Designing important?
As the scope and demand of designing and designers are taking off to higher grounds apace, it is significant to understand why the approach of Minimalism in designing is of the essence.
A minimalistic design creates a better first impression.
The designs that catch the eye of the audience as soon as they visit a website, a Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest page, or a sort of infrastructure, a multi-purpose mall, or simply a room - are what makes or breaks the artist’s first impression.
A good minimalistic design, along with being catchy is easy on the eyes and does not tire the mind of the beholder. Implying that the design will not only grab the attention but also convey the message/information as the primary intention. The minimalistic design will include as few distractions as possible which will make it uncomplicated for the observer to grasp all the necessary data.
They are more attractive.
Users are naturally drawn towards spaces that have a clean design. Designs that zero in on productive information and are easier to get things done with swiftly are, as is anticipated, more appealing.
Minimalist designs can purvey higher user engagement, better usability, and aesthetics.
It can aggrandize the brand identity.
The market is growing at the quickest pace in all of history. Customers are repeatedly besieged with marketing messages and emails and whatnot. All of this is causing an increasingly shorter attention span. A minimalist design that only focuses on the essentials can prove to be an extremely effective way to communicate with the customers amid these times.
Every post that goes on the internet must get attention, proclaim the brand identity, convey the message, kindle a positive reaction, and successfully pull it all off in mere seconds! Fortunately, the minimalist approach to designing aims exactly that.
Minimalism can ultimately lead to more consistent and faster content creation.
Advertisers are feeling the squeeze to deliver a consistent stream of new and top-notch content. Minimalist designers can essentially empower dexterity and reduce timelines when they think about the needs of future content creation.
For instance, most pieces of visual content need a picture, a font or two, and an aesthetic design. Brand designers assist other marketers to quickly construct on-brand content by providing a portfolio of components with explicit brand standards for its use.
A very wonderful example of Minimalist Brand Designing is the famous leading tech brand - Apple.
For Steve Jobs, minimal design was not an easy solution; it was the result of a lengthy process: “Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple”.
How to make a Minimalist Design?
The Minimalist way of Designing is even more complicated to get by practically than it is theoretically. As quoted by Jobs, simplifying can get more toilsome than complexing. To create a good minimalist design takes a load of creativity and bearing in mind the few rules of Minimalist Designing.
Keep it simple.
Simplicity is the cornerstone of minimalist graphic design. Integrating too many elements is the enemy of minimalist graphic design.
