Minimal Doesn’t Always Mean Simple
Textbased looks like it will be a great resource for minimalist, theory and discussions. However, because Textbased implies that minimalism is the same thing as simplicity, I want to again point out that this is a misinterpretation of meaning. Here’s the difference:
Simple interfaces are reduced (not minimized), understandable, and easy to use. In contrast, minimalist interfaces use a minimum of lines, shapes, sometimes color, and aren’t necessarily easy to use.
Because their meanings are similar, minimalism and simplicity are easy to confuse. I suspect a lot of the confusion is due to Curt Cloninger coining the term HTMinimaLism in his book, Fresh Styles for Web Designers: Eye Candy from the Underground. From his article derived from the book, HTMinimaLism Style: Part 1:
Inspired in part by the usability rantings of Jakob Nielsen, with his speedy download mantras and his least-common-denominator design approach, these new HTMinimaLists are proceeding to make beauty from code and very little else. HTMinimaLists use their skills to transform “simple” from boring to bold. And as always, the goal is effective communication — clear and uncluttered.
The simple and clear aspects of HTMinimaLism can be easily forgotten. For example, Harrumph, Heather Champ’s wonderful daily dose of photography and links is clearly a minimalist site, but not really simple or clear. If my mom and stumbled upon her site, it would be difficult for her to figure out what the point was. (See the Mom Test.) On the contrast Method is another mininalist site, but because they follow some basic web design conventions, it’s much easier to use. As soon as you land on the site, you know what they do because they tell you in big white letters. The navigation is in the upper left corner, and it defines a clear hierarchy of the site. See how minimal doesn’t always mean simple? Class dismissed.
- 11 Jul 02
- curt cloninger, design, minimalism, simplicity
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Comments
Excellent discussion, Joshua. Here’s the comment I posted on iaslash:
Absolutely agree with you Joshua — especially with the notion that minimalism is reduction not simply simplicity. But it is reduction and simplicity of form, not of meaning. Reminds me of this quote by Antoine-Marie-Roger de Saint-Exupery, which I like to think of regarding design:
La perfection est atteinte non quand il ne reste rien a ajouter, mais quand il ne reste rien a enlever.
(You know you’ve achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.)
So minimalism, I think, is concerned on some level with simplicity in form, not in communication or meaning. It is that distillation of shape and form that allows the complexity of meaning to manifest. I like, for instance the scultpure of Donald Judd. The spaces and the landscape of form he creates out of simple shapes look simple on the surface, but his intention is to suggest much. I quickly found this reference to a work by Judd to illustrate. From that page:
He is impatient with critics who claim that his works and those of other Minimal artists have no meaning. He claims he does not attempt to deliver his own political or social messages, but insists his goal is to focus on the space occupied and created by his objects—their purity of form. In the work Untitled Judd challenges the viewer to reconsider the concepts of boredom, monotony, and repetition.
michael on 16 Jul 02
I don’t know, the more I think about this, the less I know.
At first, I asserted that the one task that should subsume all others an interface addresses is simplification. And arch-minimalist interfaces, ironically enough and as you point out, frequently enough do not simplify.
But we couldn’t even achieve consensus on “simplification”; Nathan S. took issue with this, citing Richard Saul Wurman to the effect that oversimplification destroys clarity, and giving the example of a map too schematic to permit ready comprehension.
I applauded his comment - I even quoted it on my own site - but something in it still bugged me.
So I sat down and thought a little more rigorously about what I meant. It turns out that the part of Nathan’s comment that refused to gel for me was his reminder that “life isn’t simple and when we try to simplify things, we usually destroy any meaning.”
I think, in this statement, Nathan collapses simplicity of the tool with simplicity of the task - or of the end.
I believe to my very core that a valid and indeed a critical role for the artifacts we design is simplifying our lives. Not, mind you, destroying nuance, or leaching away resonance and richness and the complexity that vests as texture. But disambiguating, clarifying, ameliorating, and reducing hassle.
Simplification - conceptually a process of reduction, graphically one of abstraction - is not only an honorable goal, it’s a tool as valid as any other in the appropriate context. It just so happens that in my own case (as probably in yours, Joshua), an ethical belief in simplicity is joined by/to an aesthetic preference for minimalism.
Sometimes we need to decompose these things to see the truly important aspects for each given situation we face, huh?
Adam Greenfield on 17 Jul 02