Top 10 Web Design Ideas for Beginners in 2017

Some trends are popular for many reasons. They just work, easy to build, users are accustomed to them, flexible across many platforms and present the whole information in a more appealing and meaningful way.

The term minimalism can be defined as cutting down all the unnecessary elements and just focus on what is more important to display on the screen. Basically, minimalism showcases the real purpose of your website.

Though minimalism seems simple on the screen but requires a lot of time in the production and development practices to create a minimalistic piece.

Let’s go through a list of some nice, clean and minimal web designs that really shines in 2017 and hoping that they will be around for many years to come.

1: Stay Consistent

When it comes to creating a brand identity, a minimal brand mark can be incredibly useful. Keep your business logo super simple and the color palette very minimal, make it flexible enough to be used throughout the rest of the branding seamlessly, and helps in creating a consistent and a memorable brand.

This bar branding sign above by Simon McWhinnie is an example of being consistent in your web design.

2: Discover Hidden Relationship

Following minimalism in no way means that your design has to be any less creative. If you’re not trapped down in complex visuals, you often get a chance to explore and play with clever relationships hidden within your design.

Take a look at the branding done by Interband for Opera Australia, a minimalist design to discover a clever relationship between the words.

3: Play with Native Relationship

Minimalism allows considering the spatial relationship of the design in a way you might not have before. Do consider how your design interacts with other elements on the web page to create a wider design.

Check out these above business cards designed by Trevor Finnegan as how their design interacts with other elements to create a wider design.

5: Stay Clever

Minimalism isn’t about the lack of the illustrative elements, but instead of the careful choice of when and where to use them in your website design. Working on an illustrative element that directly relates to your brand name into a logo can help creating a very visual, and yet very minimal design.

The above example by Frame Creative created a very visual yet minimal design by following the technique of being clever.

6: Embrace the Efficiency

Minimalism is about skipping all the unnecessary things and only focusing on the website communication. Display the information neatly and efficiently, no crazy visuals required.

See how Jake Frey displayed the information on his business card (above) neatly and efficiently with no crazy visuals required.

7: Be Functional

Minimalism is just brilliant for functionality. A clean, clear and uncluttered design can make the navigation like a walk in the park. The minimal design and the clear typographical hierarchy makes the navigation of the contents page quick, easy and functional.

The minimal design and typography done by JamesKape have made the navigation of the contents page quick, easy and functional.

8: Find Some Balance

The relationship between visual elements like photographs and typography is important to get just right. A good design is the one in which no element overpowers another with no good reason.

One key trick to follow, the simple photographs should be paired with large, attention-grabbing pull quotes, while the more textured and complicated images should be paired with a small piece of body copy creating a balanced harmony between each page.

9: White Space is Alright Space

White space, aka as ‘negative space’, can sometimes look empty or blank space, but this is not entirely true! If use well, white space can help balance out your design, and help it breathe. The idea of white space results in a classy and minimal design.

10: Be Direct

When there are less visual elements fighting to be seen, designers will able to be a lot more direct with the message conveyed and the overall communication. This can be useful when doing web designing, with a direct and plain message, helps give the viewer an idea of who you are straight away.

Final Words

Minimalism is the vital component to your web design as it has the potential to be timeless. The fewer elements your design possess, the less chance it may get to go out of style or trend.

Let’s take a look on Google. The screenshots above are of 10 years ago and today’s homepage of Google.

Despite the small change, the white space, the focus on the content, and the minimalism of the website keep the design relatively timeless.

Minimalism is about the way of thinking about your design. Typographically, limit the use of fonts to create a more connected and less confusing design. In colors term, embrace monochromatic schemes but don’t be limited to them only.

Overall, consider what can be removed, whether color from the palette or image from the composition. See what can be replaced with something more concise. Reduce them and just keep what is necessary.