Web Design: Minimal vs Highend sites

gmz1023 · **Posted:** Tue Jul 02, 2013 5:43 am

So I recently bought up the rights for my projects website and just threw together a quick little page on the site... took me all of five minutes and i think it suites what is needed atm. However, I was wondering what you're guys (Guises? Peoples... ) thoughts were on Minimal Webdesign (like what i've got on my site or twitter i guess) vs High End sights (such as Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, Rooster Teeth)...

Which do you guys prefer? something that gets to the point or something with a lot of flash?

Ainia · **Posted:** Tue Jul 02, 2013 6:59 am

Shorah gmz1023,

My own thoughts on the matter of websites... a good design is more important than flash or simplicity. The best resource I've ever seen on the topic of good website design is Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think!".

There are plenty of flashy websites out there that are abominably difficult to wade through, are very user-unfriendly or make an unnecessary waste of bandwidth resources. Simple (i.e. plain html) web sites anymore tend to be signs of amateurish work or mean the site is extremely old and hasn't been updated in a *very* long while. So visitors often assume this is the case at first glance if they see plain html formatting.

Which means there isn't a simple answer to your question; or that perhaps there are more helpful questions to ask instead. Give Steve Krug's website a spin and see if you find anything helpful there.

And best of luck!!

Tomala · **Posted:** Tue Jul 02, 2013 8:36 am

It's good to start out small if you're just beginning a new project, then you can expand from there. At the same time it can be too minimal and come off looking bland to some people. Perhaps add an About page to explain what the show is about, and pick a different template or something that doesn't leave people with widescreen monitors a bunch of real estate.

Another thing you can do is look at other people who run their own websites. The most popular software they seem to host their content on is either Joomla or Wordpress. I tried Joomla for awhile and liked it, but a lot of the plugins I wanted ended up being out of my price range. So I went back to Wordpress which seems to get better support. Plus with Wordpress you can choose if you want minimal/flashy and still have options. Self hosted installs provide more freedom to do whatever you want.Plus they're excellent for hosting podcasts on. I've hosted some audio files on mine with a plugin called PodPress.

Lutece · **Joined:** Tue Jun 25, 2013 6:02 pm **Posts:** 2

Content is king.

When building a website you want to look at why you want people to come to the site and what the site is about.

For example, your site could be a Tolkienesque fantasy world. In which case a modern minimalistic design doesn't quite fit the subject matter. Of course you can run the opposite direction to much and have a typical over worked stereotypical fantasy site with Ye Old English typography (also not so great).

Minimal is more than about lack of elements and not much on the page. It uses whitespace and negative space as a framework. It is possible to have stronger design elements.

For example; Medium and Hayden

Medium uses a minimalistic design approach to their articles, with header images to provide a stronger splash of design and color. But the focus is still on the article itself (which they present in large type easy to read format).

Hayden had a large header image that introduces a block of colour, but then the rest of that page relies heavily on whitespace and negative space to form it structure.

If in doubt, you can always check out CSS Galleries (just google CSS Galleries) and look at the various works they have there which should give you an idea about how minimalism works in terms of web design.

matthornb · **Posted:** Tue Jul 02, 2013 5:55 pm

Try to keep it organized well, make sure people can navigate it... Include content that is as good as you can manage to make... And try to make it look good, but not so animation/media heavy that it takes a long time to load. The challenge is always to find a good balance between style and efficiency.

DLordofTime · **Posted:** Tue Jul 02, 2013 6:14 pm

My only comment for now shall be that 'crubmle' isn't actually a word... That's the only spelling mistake I saw.

gmz1023 · **Posted:** Tue Jul 02, 2013 6:38 pm

DLordofTime wrote:

My only comment for now shall be that 'crubmle' isn't actually a word... That's the only spelling mistake I saw.

You saw nothing, you know noootthing.... xD Thanks for pointing that out, don't know how I missed that.

@Tomala did wordpress every fix their problem with Media? Like if i were to embed a audio file like I have on the current page, would it display properly? That's the one reason I haven't installed WP yet is because I remember having so many issues with them back in the day.

And as to everything else everyone else has said; thanks for the input. It's much appreciated and has helped me at least slightly with the direction of how imma take this website.

Tomala · **Posted:** Wed Jul 03, 2013 3:09 am

gmz wrote:

Tomala did wordpress every fix their problem with Media? Like if i were to embed a audio file like I have on the current page, would it display properly? That's the one reason I haven't installed WP yet is because I remember having so many issues with them back in the day.

Yes, if you install the podpress plugin you can have it display a small media player on the page linking to your audio.

Erik · **Posted:** Thu Jul 04, 2013 6:49 pm

I think your separation between minimal webdesign and high-end sites, where you mention Facebook, isn't very good.

I would say, Facebook's design is minimalistic. I think that's even why it became so popular at the expense of previously existing, flashy social networks that were part of the whole Web 2.0 hype.

Facebook just has a lot of content, but always, the content comes first. Which is a characteristic of minimalistic web design.

Also, Ainia makes a good point, minimalistic design does not imply a minimalistic effort. Lots of popular designs these days with large headers and typography look very simple, but in most cases, quite some attention was paid to achieving just the right spacing, margins, typography, etc.. A minimalistic design can be quite vulnerable actually. Since there are so few elements that make the design, those that are need to be perfect.

gmz1023 · **Posted:** Thu Jul 04, 2013 8:34 pm

Erik wrote:

I think your separation between minimal webdesign and high-end sites, where you mention Facebook, isn't very good.

I would say, Facebook's design is minimalistic. I think that's even why it became so popular at the expense of previously existing, flashy social networks that were part of the whole Web 2.0 hype.

Facebook just has a lot of content, but always, the content comes first. Which is a characteristic of minimalistic web design.

Facebook WAS Minimalistic when it came out, however, i consider the site to be bloated now--at least retrospectively. Minimalistic to me is a site such as twitter. Twitter only three functions as far as i'm concerned; Follow, Unfollow and update your status/profile. Facebook, on the other hand has at least quadrupal that... Upload photos, create groups, create apps, create this do that. It is not the minimalistic site that it started out as 9 years ago.

Lutece · **Joined:** Tue Jun 25, 2013 6:02 pm **Posts:** 2

Whilst I see what you are getting at that's not quite how minimalism works. It's not about the fuction/services offered it's about the content presentation. You tube has a lot going on in terms of what you can do on the site, but it has a simple and minimal layout.

Twitter has only "3" functions, but I wouldn't really call the site minimal as such, there is a fair amount of information on the pages and they don't optimize whitespace in the presentation of the content.

Jamie Marchant · **Posted:** Sun Jul 07, 2013 2:57 pm

I think a website should reflect the scope of the project, since your project is smaller in scope a large website is not required.

Web Design: Minimal vs Highend sites

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