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?
Great list! My favourite is, by far, Jason Santa Maria’s site, I love it!
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.
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?
http://search.io is another great example of minimalist design. Check it out!
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)
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.
Great showcase, thanks!
@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.
Excellent list :) I love minimalist design and this is just one of the best collection I’ve seen lately :)
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!
Nice list, thanks
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 ;)
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
A great list of site designs here! Many thanks for including my blog (selfconclusion.co.uk) on the list its appreciated!
Great list. Check also out Modula. Their design is also available as a
free WordPress theme.
This is great, good job.
Love the list! Thanks! (delicioused)
Vitor’s site is so so so great. I just came across it last week. Great choice.
I think the simple, practical design of FilmSuggest (http://www.filmsuggest.com) is also a worthy mention here….
@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!
Great examples!
Just came across your site yesterday, really like your posts!
(Just added you to my RSS)
@Joel: thanks! it’s really appreciated :)
@jon – Thanks mate, loving the snowman :) xmas special nice touch
@Stu: thanks man! refresh the page a couple times, there’s a snowman, a xmas tree, etc… :)
Great post! Nice collection
Well, for me it’s //spyrestudios.com :)
Great list.
http://twitter.com/rizzy81
Very nice list
@all: thanks a lot for the comments! really appreciated! :)
@Abhisek Dutta: that really made my day hehe thanks!
wow, nice I like minimal templates, i like this list , thanks!
Sweet roundup dude! I really hope to design a more minimalistic theme for my personal Blog and hopefully focus more on content :)
Nice list of inspiration. thank you!
Love the clean designs of Self Conclusion and Matt Bango — thanks for this list!
thanks for good services
Great List! Some really awesome sites here, I really like self-conclusion, and design snips… though they are all great.
~ Aaron I
Great inspiration. Thanks :)
Nice list, check out my site Dackworld
Love the simplicity . Being simple is hard.
Cool list, i love minimal sites with nice fonts. I tryed to apply those two for my folio.
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 :-)
I’d add the original version of Muxtape to this list if I could :)
Great collection, i really inspired with your work. Coooooooooooooooooooooooooool. I have nothing to pay you rewards. Just accept my comments
Here’s a few minimal sites that I look at :)
http://www.alexafalcone.com/
http://www.visuelle.co.uk/
http://www.thisisrealart.com/
I suggest you to vist my portfolio site at http://www.zoranperin.com … pretty minimalistic :)
Very inspiring list. Thanks.
Great List! I really like distrop and spryestudios too :)
Great selection! can’t go wrong with minimalist :)
rockablepress is the first ever minimalist site that made my eyes pop! made me download that rockwell font!
Thanks for nice post !
Just wanted to let you know that all of your images are broken. I’d really like to see your post, though!
@Allie L.: Thanks for the heads up, it’s fixed :)
Great list, you should add some more like minimalissimo :)
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.
I was looking for minimalist designs for my new project and this is something truly helpful. Thanks for sharing your minimalist collection.
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.