Many of today’s most popular design trends (including flat design, large background images, and hidden global navigation) are directly or indirectly influenced by minimalism, a web-design movement that began in the early 2000’s, but borrows its philosophy from earlier movements in the fields of fine art and human–computer interaction. Minimalism sometimes presents as an attempt to prioritize content over the chrome and, when applied correctly, it can help you focus your design to simplify user tasks.
Unfortunately, some designers misinterpret minimalism as a purely visual-design strategy. They cut or hide important elements in pursuit of a minimalist design for its own sake—not for the benefits that strategy might have for users. They’re missing the core philosophy and the historical context of minimalism, and they risk increasing complexity rather than reducing it.
To better grasp and apply minimalist principles, we need to understand the origins of minimalism and its fundamental characteristics. We explore these topics in a series of two articles: In this first article we define minimalism and look at its history; in a second article we analyze in depth the characteristics of minimalist design and their impact on usability.
What Is a Minimalist Interface?
When employed correctly, the goal of minimalist web design should be to present content and features in a simple, direct way by providing as little distraction from the core content as possible. This strategy often involves removing content or features that don’t support the primary goals of the interface or its users.
Although there is some debate about what exactly qualifies as minimalist web design, there are a few common features that most designers can agree upon. These include flat textures, limited color palettes, and the use of negative space. These and other specific characteristics and their frequency of use in minimalist websites are discussed in detail in the next article in this series.
Minimalism is a reaction to bloated, or “maximalist,” UI design. Examples of such maximalist design include Flash intros and gratuitous animations, or applications crammed with as many esoteric features as possible (like Microsoft Office before the 2007 rethink).
Minimalism’s Rise to Popularity
1960s
Decades before minimalism was a trend in web design, it was a visual art movement in the era following World War II. It emerged as a reaction to the chaotic colors, motion, and marked subjectivity often found in abstract expressionists works (such as the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock). It was heavily influenced by the famous German art movement Bauhaus, which focused on simple yet functional design.
In the 1960s, minimalism became popular in a variety of fields, particularly fine art and architecture. In visual art, minimalism was characterized by monochromatic palettes, geometric elements, serial arrangements, and industrial materials.
Minimalists of note include graphic designer Josef Müller-Brockmann, painter Ellsworth Kelly, and industrial designer Dieter Rams. Note the clean lines, simplicity, and sparing use of color in each of these examples. Despite the wide variety of mediums, a coherent design style is perceptible.
The perspective behind minimalist art was neatly summarized by the motto of famous 20th century architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: “Less is more”. This motto would later become the spirit and unofficial mantra of minimalism in web design: fewer elements on a page results in lower cognitive load for users.
1980-2000
At the end of the twentieth century, minimalism began to take shape as a separate trend within the field of human–computer interaction.
In 1983, data-visualization expert Edward Tufte introduced the concept of a data–ink ratio in his work, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. In print media, the data–ink ratio is the ratio between (1) the amount of ink that communicates information, and (2) all the ink used to print the graphic. Tufte advocated maximizing this data–ink ratio by removing any elements that do not reasonably contribute new information.
Data–Ink Ratio = Informative Ink / Total Ink
This concept of data–ink ratio can be applied to web interfaces by considering the content–element ratio for any interface. The goal is similar: a high proportion of the amount of meaningful elements relative to all elements in the interface.
In 1990, HCI researcher John M. Carroll was studying the ways people used technical training manuals, and looking for ways to improve them. From his research, he developed the theory of minimalism in technical communication. Carroll’s theory suggests that a successful design will support quick action by prioritizing brevity.
Carroll stressed that reducing a design to its most basic elements is not the end goal of minimalism. Rather, Carroll championed brevity and simplicity in the service of task-oriented results. To position this approach towards web design, Carroll’s minimalism translates to getting the interface out of the way, in order to allow users to achieve their goals.
In 1995, Jakob Nielsen included minimalist design in his 10 usability heuristics. His use of the term aligned with Tufte’s and Carroll’s sense of minimalism, as he advocated eliminating irrelevant information from interfaces.
2000s
Beginning in the mid 2000s, echoes of the minimalist art movement began to appear in web interfaces: larger swaths of negative space, lower amounts of content, and restricted color palettes. Google is often credited as the pioneer of minimalist web interfaces. Google has prioritized simplicity and austerity in its interfaces ever since its beta offering in the 1990s.
Even though Google now offers a huge variety of products from Google Drive to YouTube to Gmail to Google Maps, its homepage has changed very little over 15 years. Only three navigation options are visible: in order to access the rest of Google’s offerings, users must use the grid icon to expose a tray of more options.
In spite of early trendsetters like Google, it took time for minimalism to catch on in web design. In the early 2000s, crowded interfaces dominated the web. During our impression testing sessions at that time, users overwhelmingly described the interfaces as ‘busy’.
Slowly but surely, minimalism found a foothold with early adopters: the web designers, graphic designers, artists, photographers, architects, and developers. Designer and blogger Emily Chang wrote about the rise of minimalism in 2006:
Perhaps it’s the success of Google’s search page, or our collective reaction against the flashing banner ads and intrusive popups of the last decade, or the Jonathan Ives effect, but it’s as though web users, designers, and developers alike have all agreed to a new de facto standard of Mies van der Rohe’s ‘less is more.’
Chang’s assertion that all web users and professionals embraced minimalism was definitely not accurate in 2006, and may still be an exaggeration today. However, it is reasonable to assume she did speak for the emerging popularity of minimalism among people who are deeply immersed in the cutting-edge trends of the web.
2010-2013
The emergence of responsive web design (RWD) in 2010 primed the wider web to appreciate a minimalist approach. To effectively utilize RWD techniques, organizations must carefully prioritize their content—distractions from primary content that could be ignored on desktop become big problems on mobile.
Slowly user and designer preferences began to lean towards greater simplicity in web interfaces. This shift was underscored by major redesigns carried out by two tech industry giants: Microsoft’s Modern design in 2011, and Apple’s release of iOS7 in 2013.
Microsoft’s release of Windows 8 in 2011 was the first major redesign of its operating system in decades. At the same time, it announced its design philosophy, “modern design”. This new design philosophy was quintessentially minimalist, drawing directly from the minimalist art movement. Microsoft’s official design documentation even claims that the Bauhaus school is one of its fundamental design pillars.
Though Apple has worked hard to define its brand in simplicity, Apple designers have historically—and controversially—favored skeuomorphic patterns in their interfaces. In 2013, Apple radically revamped iOS to a much flatter and more minimal style with iOS7. Apple’s decision to move toward a more minimal and flat design particularly underscores the popularity of the trend, given that it fundamentally contradicts the brand’s historic design style.
2014-2015
Minimalist design principles are now showing up in new and unexpected places: e-commerce sites, online publications, and even educational sites are adopting minimalist trends and strategies.
Many one-stop website-design and hosting services like Squarespace, Weebly, Wix, and Volusion now provide stock site templates that are almost entirely minimalist designs. These offerings are particularly significant because they often target people with no development or design experience—people who want to set up their online bike store or bakery website or online wedding invitation without having to touch Illustrator or a line of HTML. These services are selling minimalist websites because they believe it’s what their customers want.
Today, minimalism has branched into and overlaps with other prominent web-design trends such as flat design, responsive web design, and clean design. Minimalism’s contributions to these trends will be discussed in detail in next week’s article.
The Usability Debate: Is Minimalism Good for Users?
Minimalism is a design strategy that significantly influences content and information-architecture decisions. As a result, minimalism has a definite impact on the usability of the interfaces that adopt it. Unsurprisingly, the usability of minimalist-design styles has become the subject of debate amongst web professionals.
Proponents argue that minimalism reduces information overload: the more features and content you can cut out, the less people have to deal with. Minimalism done well can also create a positive emotional experience for users. People do tend to respond better to aesthetically-pleasing interfaces. As Don Norman points out, when using such interfaces they are more tolerant of usability obstacles, as long as those flaws are minor.
Since Nielsen Norman Group was founded in 1998, we have been forceful critics of maximalist (i.e., bloated) web design. You might expect us to be enthusiastic supporters of minimalist web design, but that’s not the case.
When designers adhere too rigidly to a minimalist ideology, they risk ending up with wastefully low information density and poor findability and discoverability. Extreme minimalism can be useful as an internal design exercise, but should never be a final product. Minimalism in moderation can create efficient user experiences, as long as you don’t lose sight of the primary goal—helping users accomplish tasks.
Tips for a Successful Minimalist Interface
Make sure you seriously consider whether a minimalist design strategy is right for your site, your brand, and your content. If you’re sure a minimalist design is right for you, take some lessons from the roots of minimalism.
- Adopt Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s motto, “Less is more,” in your designs. Don’t add elements just for their own sake. This rule can be true for content, visual design, and feature decisions.
- Consider reducing any elements that don’t contribute meaningful information (think about your content–element ratio.)
- Learn from Carroll’s minimalism: don’t just cut out features and elements—really think about your users’ needs and try to make tasks as brief and simple as possible.
- Know that a minimalist visual design alone, without meaningful consideration of user tasks, will not result in a successful interface. The usability issues of Windows 8 provide an excellent cautionary tale.
For an in-depth discussion of the characteristics of minimalism, read the next article in this series.
