Minimalist Designs and Clutter-free Happiness
- itadmin123rf
- Feb 25, 2020
- 4 min read
Whether you choose to transition from physical books to your Kindle collection for the sake of keeping your physical space free of things, or keeping only the necessary apps in your phone… there’s something you should know about the concept of minimalism. There are traces of minimalism in everything – digitally, physically, mentally, and especially, in design. Minimalist design expands into a whole broad spectrum of things – interiors, space, architectural structures, objects, packaging, shapes, mobile apps, landing pages, logos and even jewelry. There is a special sense of serenity and space when you’re able to use your imagination with a simple, uncluttered approach.
As minimalism first began as an art movement, the concept that emerged was that happiness stems from “less.” By showing less in your design, your content has more say. That was the basis of minimalist design that focuses on minimizing excess detail to let essential elements take the spotlight.
The Minimalist Designs Trend
With the ‘less is more’ belief on trend, many designers have adopted the minimalist perspective through simplifying their creative work. Take mobile app developers for example; designing a note-taking app to have a clean, clutter-free space so that users’ thoughts can flow with creative freedom.
Image by rawpixel, 123RF.
Minimal Layout Designs
From a visual perspective, minimalist design should be soothing and bring the mind to the essentials.
While layout and composition is the basis of graphic and web design, going minimal is all about the balance, really. Font selection is one of the fundamental focal aspects of minimalist design. You can use typography as the main focus of a web banner design, for example, with bright colors accentuating and complementing your chosen typeface. That helps your text information stand out to a viewer. But you can’t have a completely contrasting background cluttered with patterns while your text is vying for attention. This is where the concept of balance comes into play. You don’t need to add all the bells and whistles to play up your content – instead, allow the content to be the focus point of the layout.
For Web
The same goes for all types of digital design. Good, minimalist design is also a vital aspect in email marketing newsletters, for example. In order to bring focus to the newsletter content, the design of the newsletter needs to be simple yet functional.
Reducing clutter from a minimal design works well for web pages, too. Having a title, a menu, and your main content should be the bare necessities of your website design. Give more importance to visual space, because this gives your content room to breathe. If you’re looking to improve your web page’s load speed performance, keeping things essential and minimal will definitely work in your favor 😉 When your web page serves to engage readers as opposed to irritating them, you know you’ve got your minimalist designs right on track.
An example from Apple’s product page. Image by adrianhancu, 123RF.
For example, Apple has minimalism down pat with their sleek product page designs. It showcases their products in a clean, unobtrusive manner where a viewer can instantly grasp what their brand is all about.
Adopting a minimalist approach to artwork doesn’t necessarily mean it has to stick with black and white color palette. Having a functional, clean and minimal-themed website that draws a viewer’s attention to:
What the site is about
What you want them to see
Where you want them to go next
On the hunt for minimalism in photography?
For Print
The best part about adopting a minimalist design is that it can be achieved with even the most basic creative tools. Studies have shown that many small business owners tend to overthink when it comes to introducing a product to users or consumers. They want to pack a print ad with anything and everything, including contact information, brand identity, product variations, and bloating it with text.
Original image by lightfieldstudios, 123RF.
Here’s a quick design I made in under two minutes with a free online tool like Pixlr X. And because minimalism is achieved by reducing a design to only the most important elements, I only included:
The product I want to introduce
What it does for a consumer
The product’s brand
And that’s basically it – the barest essentials you really need for achieving a minimalist design, whether it’s for print, web, product packaging, logo design, and many more.
Searching for some minimalist logo design inspiration? Look no further than our collection here:
Minimalist Design Spaces
Essentially, minimalism is about breaking things down to the smallest elements necessary for a design to work. From an aesthetic point of view, minimalism is a reduction in decoration. From loft spaces with bare bones to Scandinavian style interior designs, we see a rise in minimalist living spaces.
The rise of mini homes, simple interiors and living with less continues to be a popular trend. Just run a search on Youtube and you’ll come across a ton of content on van life, micro homes, or living in small but functional spaces. In our library, there are a broad variety of keywords you could use for these searches – minimal, clean, living spaces, loft, interior. Timeless aesthetics keep an interior structured, classic and simple. There is uniformity with a simple color palette, which the images below display.
The use of complementary neutral colors, like light or dark shades for walls, gives the design of an interior a calm, attractive and interesting appeal. Accompanied by simplistic, uncluttered living spaces, the practice of minimalism has been proven to increase one’s happiness.
Creating content of your own centering around this same topic? Find visual inspiration here:
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