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15 Minimalist Designs That Inspired Me

December 20, 2008 by Jon 55 Comments

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

Self Conclusion

Design Snips

Design Snips

Five Simple Steps

Designing The Web

Feel Wire

Feel Wire

Distrop

Distrop

Shaun Inman

Shaun Inman

Huge Type

Huge Type

Jason Santa Maria

Jason Santa Maria

Indie Labs

IndieLabs

Emptees

Emptees

Rockable Press

Rockable Press

Matt Bango

Matt Bango

Vitor Lourenco

Vitor Lourenco

Mr. Tweet

Mr. Tweet

Scroll Magazine

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?

Filed Under: Minimalism, Showcase

Comments

  1. Nick | Resource Pile says

    December 20, 2008 at 4:34 pm

    Great list! My favourite is, by far, Jason Santa Maria’s site, I love it!

  2. Cory O'Brien says

    December 20, 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.

  3. Tracey Grady says

    December 20, 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?

  4. Toni says

    December 21, 2008 at 1:28 am

    http://search.io is another great example of minimalist design. Check it out!

  5. Tom says

    December 21, 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)

  6. Jon says

    December 21, 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.

  7. nnes says

    December 21, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    Great showcase, thanks!

  8. Jon Phillips says

    December 21, 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.

  9. Celeb says

    December 21, 2008 at 4:47 pm

    Excellent list :) I love minimalist design and this is just one of the best collection I’ve seen lately :)

  10. Logan Leger says

    December 21, 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!

  11. Thomas | Brush King says

    December 22, 2008 at 2:54 am

    Nice list, thanks

  12. sagbee says

    December 22, 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 ;)

  13. Peter says

    December 22, 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

  14. Stu | Selfconclusion.co.uk says

    December 22, 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!

  15. eeallo says

    December 22, 2008 at 5:52 am

    Great list. Check also out Modula. Their design is also available as a
    free WordPress theme.

  16. Rob says

    December 22, 2008 at 7:35 am

    This is great, good job.

  17. Timothy says

    December 22, 2008 at 8:14 am

    Love the list! Thanks! (delicioused)

  18. Hunter Gillane says

    December 22, 2008 at 10:30 am

    Vitor’s site is so so so great. I just came across it last week. Great choice.

  19. kyle says

    December 22, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    I think the simple, practical design of FilmSuggest (http://www.filmsuggest.com) is also a worthy mention here….

  20. Jon Phillips says

    December 22, 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!

  21. Joel Laumans says

    December 22, 2008 at 4:43 pm

    Great examples!

    Just came across your site yesterday, really like your posts!

    (Just added you to my RSS)

  22. Jon Phillips says

    December 22, 2008 at 6:40 pm

    @Joel: thanks! it’s really appreciated :)

  23. Stu | Selfconclusion.co.uk says

    December 23, 2008 at 2:08 am

    @jon – Thanks mate, loving the snowman :) xmas special nice touch

  24. Jon Phillips says

    December 23, 2008 at 3:32 am

    @Stu: thanks man! refresh the page a couple times, there’s a snowman, a xmas tree, etc… :)

  25. Jhay says

    December 24, 2008 at 5:14 am

    Great post! Nice collection

  26. Abhisek Dutta says

    December 27, 2008 at 6:01 pm

    Well, for me it’s http://spyrestudios.com :)

  27. rizzy says

    December 28, 2008 at 8:22 am

    Great list.
    http://twitter.com/rizzy81

  28. Navdeep says

    December 28, 2008 at 11:43 am

    Very nice list

  29. Jon Phillips says

    December 29, 2008 at 5:11 pm

    @all: thanks a lot for the comments! really appreciated! :)

    @Abhisek Dutta: that really made my day hehe thanks!

  30. Belmos says

    December 29, 2008 at 10:11 pm

    wow, nice I like minimal templates, i like this list , thanks!

  31. Eli says

    December 30, 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 :)

  32. projectautomatika says

    January 3, 2009 at 11:58 am

    Nice list of inspiration. thank you!

  33. Ashley McFarland says

    January 6, 2009 at 9:24 am

    Love the clean designs of Self Conclusion and Matt Bango — thanks for this list!

  34. greyvasanth says

    January 26, 2009 at 5:36 am

    thanks for good services

  35. Aaron Irizarry says

    February 18, 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

  36. Erik Smith says

    February 18, 2009 at 9:54 am

    Great inspiration. Thanks :)

  37. Chris says

    March 10, 2009 at 3:34 pm

    Nice list, check out my site Dackworld

  38. Matthias says

    May 14, 2009 at 12:48 pm

    Love the simplicity . Being simple is hard.

  39. kevin says

    May 27, 2009 at 12:55 pm

    Cool list, i love minimal sites with nice fonts. I tryed to apply those two for my folio.

  40. Osvaldas says

    May 31, 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 :-)

  41. David says

    June 2, 2009 at 2:11 pm

    I’d add the original version of Muxtape to this list if I could :)

  42. John Andi says

    June 6, 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

  43. Shen says

    June 24, 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/

  44. Zoran says

    August 9, 2009 at 4:05 pm

    I suggest you to vist my portfolio site at http://www.zoranperin.com … pretty minimalistic :)

  45. Lauren says

    August 9, 2009 at 5:27 pm

    Very inspiring list. Thanks.

  46. Akhtar says

    August 9, 2009 at 9:25 pm

    Great List! I really like distrop and spryestudios too :)

  47. Adeline says

    August 10, 2009 at 8:58 am

    Great selection! can’t go wrong with minimalist :)

  48. lhoylhoy says

    August 14, 2009 at 4:36 am

    rockablepress is the first ever minimalist site that made my eyes pop! made me download that rockwell font!

  49. gigi wax says

    March 26, 2010 at 7:25 am

    Thanks for nice post !

  50. Allie L. says

    May 12, 2010 at 10:16 am

    Just wanted to let you know that all of your images are broken. I’d really like to see your post, though!

  51. Jon Phillips says

    May 12, 2010 at 10:19 am

    @Allie L.: Thanks for the heads up, it’s fixed :)

  52. Aker says

    July 29, 2010 at 12:19 pm

    Great list, you should add some more like minimalissimo :)

  53. Steve J says

    August 27, 2010 at 5:43 pm

    I have designed many minimalist websites and looked at a 100 more but am getting to the point where it takes a really exceptional one to inspire me – far too many pastiches, the website equivalent of knocking a couple of internal walls of a house down, painting everything white and calling it minimalism.

  54. Nick Jerremy says

    June 25, 2018 at 2:41 am

    I was looking for minimalist designs for my new project and this is something truly helpful. Thanks for sharing your minimalist collection.

  55. Ahmad Farooq says

    May 21, 2021 at 4:30 am

    Using minimal design for a website does help visitors to focus on your posts and articles. However, having graphical content on a site also higher the interest level, so one must know the art of balancing it.
    Thank you.

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