Ask HN: Minimalistic web design works?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1662695

by nrbafna • 16 years ago

21 30 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

http://csa.22web.net/ This was my first actual design for a website. Though, I have been learning HTML/CSS/jQuery for only a month, I did kind of like what I made. But, it got rejected for being too minimalistic and I was said the minimalist design is not charming enough. I have looked at department of computer science websites from standford/MIT, and they all believe in getting the content out in a no non-sense manner. So, does minimalist design really work, or as some article recently pointed out (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1659020), simplicity is over-rated?

nrbafna2• 16 years ago

Links, http://csa.22web.net/ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1659020

Mz2• 16 years ago

FWIW: I don't really like the design but I can't quite say why. And I tend to like minimalist design. As best I can guess: It feels to me like your page lacks a sense of structure. I think giving something a sense of structure using minimalist design is quite challenging. When it is done well, it's wonderfully elegant. When it's not done well, there is just no there there. I guess.

tptacek3• 16 years ago

Simplicity makes things harder. Pare away elements and what remains has less margin for error, and must be more effective. "Simplicity" isn't a license to put a couple of <li>'s and a <p> on a page and call it a day.

In your case, there is neither a grid nor a measure that makes the placement of elements on the page make sense. Text is haphazard. The "contents" of each section are stuffed into an inexplicable jQuery scroller. Nav elements are 18px and subheds are 14px; there is minimal contrast between elements. This probably wouldn't cut it as a blog template.

I like the restraint with color though. Color is one place where good-simple is easier than good-complex.

Department websites at universities are also probably not a good benchmark for your work. They tend to be utilitarian. Design is a secondary concern.

RossM• 16 years ago

If I'm honest the "restraint of colour" is really a lack of colour. It needs colour - I fall foul of this all the time as I don't mind grey-scale colour schemes but it really needs at least 1, preferably two colours.

tptacek3• 16 years ago

Restrained greyscale (maybe 2-3 values plus black) and a strong accent color is the "little black dress" of web design, and an easy way for non-designers to produce designs that, while probably unspectacular, will at least look competant.

nrbafna2• 16 years ago

thanks. I am relatively new, and did a reading on the grids only yesterday. I am going to arrange the entire thing into a 960 grid system. But, I think I could be forgiven, given aa month of experience into html and jquery.

tptacek3• 16 years ago

Forgiven, yes. Used as a thesis about the merits of simplicity, not so much.

desigooner• 16 years ago

just as an fyi, Malwarebytes throws an error when trying to access the 22web.net address. Make sure the site's safe

ErrantX• 16 years ago

There is a vast difference between simplicity and minimalist.

Minimalist is very bare; the content has to stand strongly on it's own.

Simplistic designs don't have to be minimalist - just simple. So fewer colours, less complexity and so on.

People generally (in my experience anyway) prefer simple to minimalist.

percept• 16 years ago

Minimalism fans should check out the following (they're up to 7 galleries now):

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design-inspiration/

__david__• 16 years ago

I don't mind the look too much but I do hate the all ajax navigation that gratuitously breaks the back button.

I also don't like the fake scrollbar and the arbitrarily small content window that wastes half of my window height--I've got a large screen, I shouldn't have to look at your content through a peephole.

I personally like the muted colors and lack of gradient/round corners/drop shadows everywhere but I can see it being criticized as "too plain". Minimalist doesn't == good design, necessarily.

rodion_89• 16 years ago

i second the ajax hating. the site also doesnt degrade gracefully when javascript is turned off.

fuzz579• 16 years ago

http://www.anncoulter.com/

Despite her craziness, Ann Coulter has a fairly nice minimalist website (well, it looks minimalist). Although that quotations thing off to the side kinda ruins it, AFAIK it was recently added (I don't remember seeing it during to school year, when I last visited), so you might check the wayback machine.

kingkilr• 16 years ago

Hrm not sure I agree, to my understsanding minimalism is all about making sure the main thing that draws your eyes is the content, here all of the stuff on the right is completely distracting from the content.

Mz2• 16 years ago

Click on any other page besides the home page and you might better understand his point. I also kind of went "huh???!!" on the homepage.

thaumaturgy• 16 years ago

This would be a fine design for a personal blog, but no, it's not something that should be presented to a client.

Most design clients want art. They want something that is uniquely theirs; they want a combination of colors and patterns and graphics that are unmistakably unique. The designer's job is to reconcile art with function. What you built is all function, and no art.

(But I like it.)

tta• 16 years ago

I think the CloudApp interface does an awesome job of being minimalist. For instance, check out this download page: http://cl.ly/e9dd6a48f2ef6bc63688

(If you haven't heard of CloudApp: http://getcloudapp.com)

chewbranca• 16 years ago

Good article I saw recently on minimalist web design, might give you some ideas: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/12/minimalist-web-desig...

todayiamme• 16 years ago

It works to a certain extent in real life, but it won't work in BITS Pilani, until you find the right person or word it in the right way.

I am saying this because I actually over heard the management say that it isn't good for "business" if people thought x about the institute at the conference my mother forced me to attended, which is just... sad.

It isn't that their education quality is less (same texts; good enough teachers will give you the required amount of education. The rest is up to you). It's just that it is less likely to find free thinkers over there who are willing to speak out. If there are smart people on the faculty (there must be) they choose their battles carefully and in this case they would tow the managements line. If this was TIFR or IISc (I say this out of first hand experience) then it would have been fine, because they encourage such stuff and they would be delighted to find someone on the tail end of the curve.

Should I give you some advice as someone who has been through this?

Give them what they want.

Your professors are wise and follow their lead over here. Building a website is something trivial in the longer run and you have to pick your battles wisely. Spend the same energy in mastering this as it's obvious that you have a talent at work over here. Remember fighting with idiots tends to make you an idiot.

So, tread softly because you tread on your dreams.

Anyway, take care.

jjg• 16 years ago

Jason Fried had a quote recently about proportion in design and the space between elements of the design. Although you have a minimal number of elements in your design, their arrangement isn't in the right proportion. It's not harmonious.

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2531-great-proportions-melt-a...

There are a few other basic things that could be changed to make the site much more usable. As someone else said, don't break the back button. Ditch the scrolly boxes. You don't need them and they're unintuitive. Differentiate the links on the page from the rest of the text. Right now the navigation links are the same grey as the rest of the content. You have some red text mixed in there and it looks clickable, but it isn't.

You're off to a good start, it just needs some refinement.

SteveC• 16 years ago

For minimalism to work you need strong content. This website doesn't have that. Even with strong content this design still has plenty of problems. That link hover effect is awful. It feels like I'm playing whack-a-mole. You also limited the content to a fixed height container. That would come back to bite you if page content increases significantly or average screen resolution increases. The website is also very forgettable. It has no real identity of it's own. The name isn't even in the overall template.

drblast• 16 years ago

For what it's worth, I love the design for the most part, but there are a couple of problems that are bad enough people might reject the whole thing as "too minimal."

The content frame in the middle has a scrollbar but no border, which is off-putting since it's not standard. It's also not the full height of the browser, which is useless; don't make me scroll more than I have to. For large pages, that the gray box is a scrollbar is not obvious.

There is no indication that clicking faculty opens a new page. I thought something went wrong the first time I clicked it.

The "association.SOMETHING" message at the top is a nice touch, but since it's right justified it moves when you click a new page. The word "association" should not move -- it's distracting.

The text in the paragraphs is too small for no reason, especially on your "home" page.

I really like how the current page's link is indented and how the links move to the right when you mouse over them. That's a nice touch and intuitive. I love the lack of color. The page is otherwise very easy to read and navigate.

auxbuss2• 16 years ago

You need to validate your code. It's currently invalid due a number of fundamental errors.

A simple method is to use the HTML Validator plug-in in Firefox. It's not perfect, but a simple, effective guide.

alexforster• 16 years ago

Validate your code by testing it in the three major layout engines. Force it to degrade by disabling flash, stylesheets, javascript, etc and fix what you feel you can. Get as much content on-screen as quickly as you can, whether by using CDNs or backend caching or local storage, and know exactly what happens on your page in the first few seconds after onLoad. If you're feeling particularly generous, annotate the code for screen readers and hide jump links around your page.

But don't validate your code on the W3C validator and be done with it. If you have to run the validator at all - and I haven't in years - take the validation errors as suggestions and not as gospel.

auxbuss2• 16 years ago

That's why I said, "It's not perfect, but a simple, effective guide". It's a guide, not a fait accompli.

If it fails that test, then it'll fail more thorough tests. Fail and fail early.

cmelbye• 16 years ago

I can't stand small scrolling areas within pages. This one is better than most because the content actually scrolls when I slide with two fingers on a Mac, but it's still more difficult to read.

sleepingbot• 16 years ago

http://faircompanies.com

We tried to make things really simple in our site. Goal: content is king. The rest, should fade away from user's attention.

Short of what Jeff Bezos is trying with the Kindle reading experience.

c00p3r• 16 years ago

How about this particular site? Is it works for you?

Nicolo_Borghi• 16 years ago

I wouldn't put together "minimalism" and "simplicity" as there is a fundamental difference between the two.

When something is minimal it's not very useful. It's basically saying "I don't want to look too complex".

On the other hand when something is simple it's because there's and underlying understanding of complexity.

You can read what Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, thinks about this (http://designthinking.ideo.com/?p=404).

The work of a designer should be therefore to understand complexity and make it simple.In order to make it simple, the designer should ultimately be the one who decides what to add and what to leave out.

I really suggest this video by Joel Spolsky during BoS 2009 http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/08/19.html

Ask HN: Minimalistic web design works?

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