Less is more — How the minimalist approach can be powerful in digital design ?
Tags: Minimalism, Instagram, Beginners Guide

What is minimalism in digital design? Why are they important?

In digital design, minimalism is about keeping it simple and calm. It is a harmonious combination of elements on the interface.

Minimalism is more than an aesthetic choice. As Steve Jobs mentioned, most people would consider the simplicity in design as a visual. In fact, it is about how the design works. Minimalism look indeed satisfies the tastes of mass users, but the ultimate goal of minimalism is usability and practicality.

Some researches have shown that what the customers value the most is how easy and quick they can get their content. Minimalism reduces the number of elements to a necessary amount. It provides clarity in navigation and emphasis on the content. Therefore, the whole user experience is empowered to be more efficient. Besides benefiting the customers, a minimalistic website is easy to maintain, too.

Users care about efficiency and clarity

From a psychological point of view, a sleek interface can also convey a certain level of trust by showing that the company is confident with what they are providing, as they provide in a clarified way.

What are the essential elements in minimalistic design?

1. Empty Space

The proper use of empty space is state of the art in minimalism practice. More empty space means an emphasis on primary functionalities. Therefore, to arrange empty space appropriately, designers must do a lot of user research to decide on which functions to keep.

New designers like me sometimes neglect the importance of empty space. They are afraid of wasting spaces not to contain visual elements. To help beginners to start, you can arrange the white space from a macro and micro point of few.

The left-side is more clarified than the right-side

Macro white space is taking charge of the whole layout and directing uses on the navigation. It balances out the visual of different components (i.e., button, text, typography) and enhances the page structure. Users can easily identify the functions on the page.

One best example to explain this the Google’s search engine, which adopts massive whitespace. Users do not face any distractions when entering their search words in the text box.

Google’s Search Engine

Micro white space is the space to separate individual images and texts. It improves the aesthetics of each component.

The padding on the left side adding readability to the text

White space is set to give ways to real content on the page. Images, colors, and typography are going to dominate the white space. How to use these elements to fill in the white space is another state of art. One effective way to achieve a minimalistic look is to reduce the excessive variation in style and include contrast. The Instagram interface is an excellent example to explain.

2. Typography

In minimalism principle for typography, designers should work with fewer font types but more font style. Whether you have noticed or not, Instagram only uses one system font to display all its information, but they vary in shade (between black and grey) and thickness.

In contrast with the clean font, the curly word mark of Instagram aims to create a focal point on the page. It is very impressive and attention-grabbing as part of Instagram’s branding.

Instagram Interface

3. Colors

Instagram adopts contrast color black and white, which reduces the distraction to a large extent. It ensures that the background color won’t conflict with any color posted in the image.

Besides black and white, Instagram also has its unique gradient color. The smooth transition of the color from orange to blue symbolizes the change of sunlight from morning to evening. Although the design is minimalistic, it can convey a lot of information. Some internal icons also use this gradient color, which matches the logo.

Instagram gradient color

4. Images and Icons

The icons are traced by single outlines in a minimalistic style. The frame images are in a regular rectangular shape, with a fixed width 1080 pixel. The rules here, standardize the page layout and contribute to a minimalist look on Instagram.

Instagram Frame

In all, the minimalist look on Instagram makes it easier for users to consume the content. The Instagram frame is designed to highlight the content inside perfectly. Therefore, it is even popular to hold the physical Instagram frame to take photos in events.