29 Sep 2004

Why Less is More, and Simple is Complex (Draft)

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)