The Best Elements of Minimalistic UI Design

Minimalist UI design has remained on the rise for a few years in a row.?

Well-designed minimalist products immediately catch attention, emphasize primary actions you want the users to take, and improve the overall usability of the apps. but minimalism is quite tricky to get right.

In this blog, we share best practices for minimalist website design from the experience of our digital product design agency. But before we get to that, it’s important to understand what is minimalist UI design and how you can benefit from it.

Understanding Minimalistic UI Design

Minimalist web design is a style or technique that focuses on providing a clean view by including only the most important design elements. With minimalist UI design, users aren’t bombarded with dozens of pictures, the whole spectrum of different colors, and multiple fonts. What they see is a visually pleasing and balanced interface.

Even though a lot of people think that creating a minimalist website design is as easy as pie, even experienced designers can mess up by:

• Not finishing the design properly, making it look incomplete.
• Hiding important buttons to keep things minimal, making users confused.
• Oversimplifying design for the sake of minimalism.

Therefore, it’s important to remember, that simple is not limiting or primitive. It’s no use designing a cleaner interface by sacrificing user experience. Designers must find the balance between those two and test their design decisions with real users.

Best Practices for Minimalistic UI Design

Here are the best principles that can help you make really nice simple websites, applications, and any digital products.?

The Power of White Space

Design elements need space to breathe. Make sure text, images, icons, and buttons have enough space around them. This helps users find important things on your website more easily.?

It doesn’t necessarily need to be “white”, the term refers to space in the design of any color or pattern. Types of white space include micro and macro white space. Micro white space is the space between small elements like letters, text lines, paragraphs, icons, and buttons, while macro white space is the space between larger elements like text columns, graphics, paddings, and margins.?

Additionally, white space can be categorized as passive or active. Passive space is subtle and goes unnoticed, used for arranging text or icons. In contrast, active space draws attention to specific elements like headlines or logos, intentionally emphasizing certain areas of the design.

Using white space is very important as it helps the eye move smoothly through a design, making text easier to read and giving a specific feel to the overall look.

Have a look at Nike’s website, for example. It features clean layouts with ample white space, allowing the products to stand out and creating a sense of focus on the brand's offerings.

Typography and Font Choices

Typography isn’t just about the text, it’s about how this text contributes to the overall aesthetic of your digital product.

Choosing the right fonts, sizes, and spaces between lines makes the content easier to read and looks better for users. We recommend choosing not more than three sans-serif typefaces such as Helvetica, Futura, or Verdana, and combining them with serif fonts to create a nice-looking contrast while preserving simplicity.

Important information like titles, taglines, or CTAs can stand out by using different sizes, styles, and thicknesses of letters. A good visual hierarchy makes sure people remember the main message, even if there's a lot of other stuff on the page.

The Medium website features a clean and minimalistic design with a focus on typography. The use of a simple, serif font for body text and a bold, sans-serif font for headings creates a clear hierarchy and enhances readability.

Clear and Simple Navigation

The navigation of your website or application has an enormous impact on how quickly users find what they need. Minimal navigation styles are very effective as users can immediately understand how to perform certain actions which significantly boosts conversion rates.

Simplified navigation also enables eye-catching designs by reducing clutter, and it's becoming a widely accepted user pattern.

Here are some of the best practices for clear and simple navigation in minimalistic design

• Keep the number of menu items to a minimum to avoid overwhelming users. Focus on the most important sections or pages that users are likely to access frequently.
• Use clear and descriptive labels for navigation items to help users understand where each link will take them. Avoid ambiguous terms.
• Maintain a consistent placement of navigation elements throughout the interface to help users easily locate and access them.
• Highlight primary navigation items that are essential for users to accomplish their goals. Secondary or less important links can be placed in submenus or secondary navigation areas.
• Use visual cues such as icons or arrows to indicate interactive elements and guide users through the navigation process.
• Incorporate breadcrumbs to help users understand their current location within the website's hierarchy and facilitate easy navigation backtracking.
• Conduct user testing to evaluate the effectiveness of your navigation design and identify any usability issues. Use feedback to iteratively improve the navigation experience.

A good example is Apple. Its website showcases minimalist navigation, featuring a clean design with ample whitespace and minimal distractions. The simple menu with a small number of menu items avoids clutter and ensures users aren't overwhelmed by choice. It offers users a smooth browsing experience, aligning well with Apple's brand identity.

Videos and Animations

Motion design can substitute thousands of words which is a big advantage for products aiming at minimalistic look. Using motion is a great way to grab users’ attention. By adding dynamic elements to static interfaces, companies can encourage users to explore and interact with a design, increasing engagement and time spent on a website or app. Motion design allows designers to incorporate storytelling, humor, or other expressive elements that resonate with users on a deeper level.

Videos and animations also make a design more visually interesting and dynamic, breaking up the monotony of static layouts and capturing users' interest. Thoughtfully designed motion can add depth, texture, and visual richness to a design, making it more compelling and enjoyable to interact with.

Minimalist Color Schemes and Contrast

Minimalistic UI design is based on a limited color palette, frequently made up of two or three colors. Monochromic or similar color palettes are used to give the feeling of simplicity.?

One of the popular strategies is to use monochromic tones of grey while introducing an accent color. This color usually highlights the specific elements on the page or calls to action.

Neutral colors like white, gray, or beige as a backdrop are chosen for backgrounds to make other colors stand out while subtle gradients create depth and dimension without cluttering the design.

Minimalist designs often feature high contrast between elements to create visual impact and clarity. This can include contrasts in color, texture, size, and typography. The contrast in texture and shape can also contribute to the overall aesthetic of minimalist design. For example, a smooth, minimalist layout may incorporate textural contrasts through the use of subtle gradients or geometric shapes.

Unsplash's website showcases minimalist design with a focus on high-quality imagery. The site's neutral color scheme of white, gray, and black provides a clean backdrop for the vibrant, high-resolution photos, allowing them to stand out and command attention.

The Use of Images and Graphics in Minimalistic Design

The days of pages bombarded with images have already passed. Today, the emphasis in design is put on quality rather than quantity. It doesn’t mean that minimalist web design goes without imagery. It’s more about the careful choice of these photos and places you use them as a focal point or a balance element.

However, if your website or product shows lots of photos because of the niche it belongs to, you can still make it look simple by organizing them neatly.?

Minimalist design isn't just about how you show the photos and how many of them are on the page, but also about what's in these photos. Make sure the photos you pick go well together and don't distract the users.

Take an example of COS. COS imagery often features clean and minimalist compositions, with a focus on simplicity and elegance. The use of clean lines, neutral colors, and uncluttered backgrounds creates a sense of sophistication and refinement. The brand places a strong emphasis on high-quality photography, with images that are well-lit, sharply focused, and professionally composed. This attention to detail enhances the overall aesthetic and elevates the brand image.

Consistency and Clarity in Minimalistic Design

Minimalistic UI design maintains consistency in visual elements, functionality, and interaction patterns throughout the interface. This creates a cohesive and unified user experience that is predictable and easy to understand.

Consistency in design fosters predictability. When design elements and functionalities remain consistent throughout a website or application, users can apply their learned experiences from one area to another without needing to relearn.

By maintaining consistent use of colors, icons, and layouts, users can easily navigate the website without confusion. For example, a website where the main navigation menu consistently appears at the top of each page, allowing users to access different sections of the site easily. This consistency in layout helps users navigate the website efficiently, regardless of which page they are on.

At the core of clarity lies the principle of affordance — indicating a design object's functionality. Transparency is achieved by maximizing affordance, allowing users to instantly understand an element's purpose. Clarity ensures users do not misinterpret design elements. Vague icons or unclear call-to-action buttons can lead to user frustration and unintended actions.

Summary

“Simplicity is an exact medium between too little and too much”. Minimalistic UI design is about giving your users the experience they need to get around the website or app easily, without anything getting in the way and making them confused or lost.

A successful minimalimalist design relies on understanding the needs, preferences, and behaviors of your target audience alongside making sure that all design elements work together harmoniously to create a cohesive and balanced composition.?

At QU’ARTE, we create unique, custom, and compelling designs that reflect your brand and reach out to and engage with your target audience on several levels. Tell us your story, we will get things done.