I've been seeing illustrator/ graphic designer/ art director sites moving in this kind of ultra-minimal direction for a few years now and am finding it really lovely. Focus on the work and all that.

examples: http://www.anjejager.com/index.php http://www.upso.org/ http://www.thisisforest.com/

Thoughts?

I didn't find the first two very usable. The first for some reason seemed clunky and unfinished. I imagine if the third level of navigation had popped left of the second level it would have felt better. Second was trying to hard.

Did like the third quite a bit.

I had been trying a minimalist approach in my portfolio. but it pretty much ended up being shit, so perhaps I should keep my criticism to myself.

In 94 or so I remember visiting an art school site that only had a select box in the middle. It was very effective if memory serves me correct.

At least with regards to photo/illustration/design sites, I like to have a thumb of a project before I click into it. The name rarely means anything to me. So the 3rd site works better for me.

Overall, it's good to simplify, but taken to its own extreme, isn't any more usable.

Make it as simple as possible, but no simpler. If you get my drift.

Indeed. Less isn't more; just enough is more.

Worth noting, I came to that first site through a link, and it works better fleshed out some I think. http://www.anjejager.com/illustration/nylon/

Pretty nice deeper down. Although needs something between 2nd and 4th level. I bailed.. but i am impatient.

i dont think minimalism is bad but the website should look like you are a designer. I mean typographical hierarchy seems to be absent from these particular sites.

I mostly agree with what everyone else is saying here though I think it is also worth remembering that we may be overlooking the intent here. The first two sites don't work for me from a casual browsing perspective but they work a lot better from an archive/portfolio one. I would imagine that most people would go to the root of the domains because they know what they are expecting and those that don't would be deep linked directly into the content.

I enjoy minimalism but these sites push it a little far for me... colour, typography, decorators etc are powerful tools completely ignored here.

What is great for designers, and what's great for clients is two very different things.

I think going minimal is fine and well, but prospective clients should be able to see some design touches, and that just doesn't.

Nice blend of old school and contemporary ui approaches. Pretty, too. Good work!

Originally posted by: arigato Nice blend of old school and contemporary ui approaches. Pretty, too. Good work!

yup. nice work.

Doran - its hard for me to read the pixel font.

This is mine which is also pretty minimal in my opinion:http://endersdrift.freeiz.com/

thanks guys. i'm of two minds about the whole thing now but the client it happy so i'm happy. i know the font can be a tad difficult to read media44 unless you're talking about it actually being blurry somewhere which i hope isn't the case. nice work on your site btw. i'd consider putting the 'client work' section as your default home page if i were you though since the 'about' section isn't much to look at.

// that might read wrong but what i meant was that i thought it was too simple, not that it was poorly done.

Hi Kids. Just went live with this thing today and I thought it seemed a better fit in this thread than in a new one in Projects. I think it qualifies as super-minimal but you might not agree.

The client wanted something that was minimal, playful, animated but not over the top, and a design where the interface itself was a major (if not the main) design element. It was probably one of my more difficult projects although it might not look that way which I suppose it shouldn't. There's no CMS yet but they'll be able to update everything in there eventually.

I know from a usability standpoint, having the menu buttons move around to different places is a no-no but all of the options all sit in a relatively small area so we weighed the pros and cons and went with it. The rollover animations when you're in the 'home' grid can get a little buggy when you move around too fast but I tried to get it looking as good as I could. All of the line work in the site is done using the drawing API, which I don't have much experience with, so I'm sure there's room for improvement. Comments and critiques welcome.

//edited out for client reasons

well apparently i spoke too soon. as of today, the site is pulled and they're going to go with a wordpress setup instead.

blows brains out

That sucks man

I dont know why web designers even exist anymore it seems like the only jobs are either wordpress/joomla or back end development. Nobody gives a shit anymore about web design. Just give it a header, menu on top or left and spam ads on the right.

There's no accounting for retards, D. * manhugs *

m44, I just got in a pissing contest with a joomla guy over a rebrand. I talked to the money guy and I don't have to deal with mr. joomla any more. Sometimes expertise pays off.

that's because bad developers are lazy.

Having been a webdesigner myself for years and doing my websites always myself i switched to Wordpress this year. Designed a clean looking frontend and altered backend and put some nice plugins in there and i'm quite happy with it. Never been so easy to update or enhance the website where a regular website takes a load of time/money to have all those things.

That doesn't take away that there are plenty of people with ugly looking fucked up WP websites out there but a good webdesigner can build a nice WP website for their client and earn his money easier and faster than before.

And about minimal websites, i like minimal websites but alot of minimal websites are ugly because they forget that they look like shit on big screens. At least consider "filling" the screen in some way and being minimal at the same time. That site of Doran is a nice example on how it should be done.

Thanks guys. In fairness though, this client does care about design and I've worked on multiple projects for them over the years where things have gone well. It just wasn't the case this time although it's still disappointing. As for Wordpress, it definitely has its place and I use it once in a while as needed.