15 Minimalist Designs That Inspired Me
I‘ve always liked minimalism! Little or no use of images and a strong focus on the typography and on the content instead of graphical elements always did the trick for me. Of course I love a well-crafted website that makes good use of various graphical elements like characters/avatars, buttons, icons and others.
But, when I started thinking of redesigning SpyreStudios I thought I’d go with a very minimalist approach so that the focus really is on the articles/posts and the comments. I dropped the usual sidebar and also reduced the overall width to 700px. Hey, you can’t blame the guy for trying something different, right? :)
Here are some websites I really liked that inspired the redesign of SpyreStudios (in no particular order):
Self Conclusion
Design Snips
Five Simple Steps
Feel Wire
Distrop
Shaun Inman
Huge Type
Jason Santa Maria
Indie Labs
Emptees
Rockable Press
Matt Bango
Vitor Lourenco
Mr. Tweet
Scroll Magazine
Your Turn To Talk
So, you can now go ahead and bombard me with your favorite minimalist designs :)
Which ones are you favorites, and why?
About the author:
Jon Phillips is the founder and owner of SpyreStudios and the co-founder of MediaLoot. Jon is a designer, developer, typography lover and musician.
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December 20th, 2008
Great list! My favourite is, by far, Jason Santa Maria’s site, I love it!
December 20th, 2008
Great list! I love the minimalist style as well, and you picked some of the best. It’s tough to do as a designer because you always want to add that one more feature, but if you really have a grasp on what your core value it, you can make a minimalist design that still works really well and makes it easy to understand at first glance for any new visitors.
December 20th, 2008
They’re all beautiful, and I am equally a fan of minimalist websites. Just one question – why only white backgrounds? Is that your personal preference, or just coincidence?
December 21st, 2008
http://search.io is another great example of minimalist design. Check it out!
December 21st, 2008
Good! Really nice links.. Actually, I do know some of them but not all. Minimalism is the best thing of the web (if it is well used, I mean with clear things)
December 21st, 2008
A lot of these sites were really solid actually. Great use of empty space and typography. 21gunstudios.com is another site that really has minimalism down, and it’s a dark design which is quite different from the rest of the list.
December 21st, 2008
Great showcase, thanks!
December 21st, 2008
@all: Thanks guys! Glad you liked the list :)
@Tracey: Well, I like white or lighter backgrounds, but that was just a coincidence. I like darker designs as well.
December 21st, 2008
Excellent list :) I love minimalist design and this is just one of the best collection I’ve seen lately :)
December 21st, 2008
I’m really into the minimalist aesthetic. It shows up in all of my designs.
I recently redesigned my site (loganleger.com) and, of course, it’s minimalist. I drew inspiration from the famous minimalist sites, but also from http://www.criterion.com/.
Great list!
December 22nd, 2008
Nice list, thanks
December 22nd, 2008
Some of them really inseparable mimimalist designs, that rockable freelancers ones always inspired me alot ;)
So far, you tried best to make small cool website mimimalist designs
Cheers and stumbling too ;)
December 22nd, 2008
Nice list, although i do tend to love minimal designs to be a tiny bit more ‘grungy’ of with a minimal twist, like this once i created for myself just now: http://www.formatt.info
December 22nd, 2008
A great list of site designs here! Many thanks for including my blog (selfconclusion.co.uk) on the list its appreciated!
December 22nd, 2008
Great list. Check also out Modula. Their design is also available as a
free WordPress theme.
December 22nd, 2008
This is great, good job.
December 22nd, 2008
Love the list! Thanks! (delicioused)
December 22nd, 2008
Vitor’s site is so so so great. I just came across it last week. Great choice.
December 22nd, 2008
I think the simple, practical design of FilmSuggest (http://www.filmsuggest.com) is also a worthy mention here….
December 22nd, 2008
@all: glad you liked the list (and thanks for the stumbles and delicious votes) :)
@stu: very welcome buddy, selfconclusion has a killer design in my opinion!
@eeallo: Modula is a nice one! I just downloaded it! thanks for sharing the link!
December 22nd, 2008
Great examples!
Just came across your site yesterday, really like your posts!
(Just added you to my RSS)
December 22nd, 2008
@Joel: thanks! it’s really appreciated :)
December 23rd, 2008
@jon – Thanks mate, loving the snowman :) xmas special nice touch
December 23rd, 2008
@Stu: thanks man! refresh the page a couple times, there’s a snowman, a xmas tree, etc… :)
December 24th, 2008
Great post! Nice collection
December 27th, 2008
Well, for me it’s http://spyrestudios.com :)
December 28th, 2008
Great list.
http://twitter.com/rizzy81
December 28th, 2008
Very nice list
December 29th, 2008
@all: thanks a lot for the comments! really appreciated! :)
@Abhisek Dutta: that really made my day hehe thanks!
December 29th, 2008
wow, nice I like minimal templates, i like this list , thanks!
December 30th, 2008
Sweet roundup dude! I really hope to design a more minimalistic theme for my personal Blog and hopefully focus more on content :)
January 3rd, 2009
Nice list of inspiration. thank you!
January 6th, 2009
Love the clean designs of Self Conclusion and Matt Bango — thanks for this list!
January 26th, 2009
thanks for good services
February 18th, 2009
Great List! Some really awesome sites here, I really like self-conclusion, and design snips… though they are all great.
~ Aaron I
February 18th, 2009
Great inspiration. Thanks :)
March 10th, 2009
Nice list, check out my site Dackworld
May 14th, 2009
Love the simplicity . Being simple is hard.
May 27th, 2009
Cool list, i love minimal sites with nice fonts. I tryed to apply those two for my folio.
May 31st, 2009
Lovely picks Jon. I have always been impressed by designs where graphical details meet type. As a result Feel Wire is probably the closest example to my description :-)
June 2nd, 2009
I’d add the original version of Muxtape to this list if I could :)
June 6th, 2009
Great collection, i really inspired with your work. Coooooooooooooooooooooooooool. I have nothing to pay you rewards. Just accept my comments
June 24th, 2009
Here’s a few minimal sites that I look at :)
http://www.alexafalcone.com/
http://www.visuelle.co.uk/
http://www.thisisrealart.com/
August 9th, 2009
I suggest you to vist my portfolio site at http://www.zoranperin.com … pretty minimalistic :)
August 9th, 2009
Very inspiring list. Thanks.
August 9th, 2009
Great List! I really like distrop and spryestudios too :)
August 10th, 2009
Great selection! can’t go wrong with minimalist :)
August 14th, 2009
rockablepress is the first ever minimalist site that made my eyes pop! made me download that rockwell font!
March 26th, 2010
Thanks for nice post !
May 12th, 2010
Just wanted to let you know that all of your images are broken. I’d really like to see your post, though!
May 12th, 2010
@Allie L.: Thanks for the heads up, it’s fixed :)
July 29th, 2010
Great list, you should add some more like minimalissimo :)
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