I’ve been doing a bit of “solo brainstorming” about my philosophy/theory of minimalist web design. It is by no means final and still has a lot of work to be done before it can be considered a final document. I just wanted to post it to see what people thought.
Why Less is More, and Simple is Complex a web development theory
by Kevin Marsh
Abstract: Presenting content in a simple and elegant way is complex.
Main Ideas:- The term “web design” is misleading. There are really more facets to producing an effective web site.
- Two elements to web “design”: content and presentation (design).
- Content and presentation as two separate entities are not necessarily difficult.
- The fusion of the two is more complicated than both combined.
- When creating one or the other, they both must be kept in mind.
- Presenting accessible (navigable) content without distraction is crucial.
- Sometimes some of the most complex solutions are the easiest.
- Presenting content in a simple, easy-to-understand way is complex.
- A static web site presents content (content/presentation)
- A dynamic web site presents content and provides interaction (content/presentation/logic)
- Simple does not have to be boring.
Web Applications Content (text/images) – database Presentation (HTML, CSS) Logic (PHP/Perl/ASP)
What is Distracting? (a.k.a. Worst Practices or “1999 Design”) Large, superfluous images (i.e., animated GIFs of chrome @ signs) Annoying tags (blink, marquee) Too many colors Slow-loading Poor typography (i.e., too many different typefaces, unreadable typefaces, poor contrast) Ungraceful degradation/browser bugs Poor navigation “Messy” URLs (i.e., http://www.example.com/pg.php?site=products&id=932433&=&=...) Proprietary plugins (Flash, Java…)
What is Elegant? (a.k.a. Best Practices) Good typography (one or two readable fonts) A few, solid (or gradient) colors that go well together Straight-forward navigation Quick-loading Few (or no) images, efficiently compressed Clean, semantic markup Clean URLs (i.e., http://www.example.com/products/category/item) No proprietary plugins (i.e., no Flash or Java) Adheres and validates to web standards (XHTML and CSS)
