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 Spyre Studios 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 Spyre Studios (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?
Cheers
Jon Phillips
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December 20th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Great list! My favourite is, by far, Jason Santa Maria’s site, I love it!
December 20th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
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 at 11:04 pm
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 at 1:28 am
http://search.io is another great example of minimalist design. Check it out!
December 21st, 2008 at 1:08 pm
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 at 3:06 pm
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 at 3:28 pm
Great showcase, thanks!
December 21st, 2008 at 4:30 pm
@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 at 4:47 pm
Excellent list :) I love minimalist design and this is just one of the best collection I’ve seen lately :)
December 21st, 2008 at 10:57 pm
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 at 2:54 am
Nice list, thanks
December 22nd, 2008 at 2:58 am
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 at 4:02 am
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 at 5:15 am
A great list of site designs here! Many thanks for including my blog (selfconclusion.co.uk) on the list its appreciated!
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:52 am
Great list. Check also out Modula. Their design is also available as a
free Wordpress theme.
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:35 am
This is great, good job.
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:14 am
Love the list! Thanks! (delicioused)
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:30 am
Vitor’s site is so so so great. I just came across it last week. Great choice.
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I think the simple, practical design of FilmSuggest (http://www.filmsuggest.com) is also a worthy mention here….
December 22nd, 2008 at 2:33 pm
@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 at 4:43 pm
Great examples!
Just came across your site yesterday, really like your posts!
(Just added you to my RSS)
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:40 pm
@Joel: thanks! it’s really appreciated :)
December 23rd, 2008 at 2:08 am
@jon – Thanks mate, loving the snowman :) xmas special nice touch
December 23rd, 2008 at 3:32 am
@Stu: thanks man! refresh the page a couple times, there’s a snowman, a xmas tree, etc… :)
December 24th, 2008 at 5:14 am
Great post! Nice collection
December 27th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Well, for me it’s http://spyrestudios.com :)
December 28th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Great list.
http://twitter.com/rizzy81
December 28th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Very nice list
December 29th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
@all: thanks a lot for the comments! really appreciated! :)
@Abhisek Dutta: that really made my day hehe thanks!
December 29th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
wow, nice I like minimal templates, i like this list , thanks!
December 30th, 2008 at 4:59 am
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 at 11:58 am
Nice list of inspiration. thank you!
January 6th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Love the clean designs of Self Conclusion and Matt Bango — thanks for this list!
January 26th, 2009 at 5:36 am
thanks for good services
February 18th, 2009 at 9:52 am
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 at 9:54 am
Great inspiration. Thanks :)
March 10th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Nice list, check out my site Dackworld
May 14th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Love the simplicity . Being simple is hard.
May 27th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Cool list, i love minimal sites with nice fonts. I tryed to apply those two for my folio.
May 31st, 2009 at 1:36 pm
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 at 2:11 pm
I’d add the original version of Muxtape to this list if I could :)
June 6th, 2009 at 7:01 am
Great collection, i really inspired with your work. Coooooooooooooooooooooooooool. I have nothing to pay you rewards. Just accept my comments
June 24th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Here’s a few minimal sites that I look at :)
http://www.alexafalcone.com/
http://www.visuelle.co.uk/
http://www.thisisrealart.com/
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