Your Trend-Fu is Strong (My Aesthetic Interest is Weak)
Over the course of this week, I have spent every morning driving my poor, cranky snake to the veterinary clinic so that he can get shot up with a cocktail of antibiotics to cure his pneumonia. There are two major points to this: 1) snake lung fluid is vaguely like slug goo, and 2) I've had a lot of time to browse the 'net on my brand new iPhone. (And 3) Birthdays are good for something!) This means, while waiting for my wheezy snake to be seen by the best vet in the world, I randomly jump from link to link, checking out various websites linked on twitter or found in the vast, tangled webs of the, well, web. In short, I waste a lot of time doing nothing.
It does, however, give me a healthy dose of what trends are picking up in the design world, and I've found a new pet peeve: minimalist designs.
Don't set my hair on fire, I don't hate all of them, but allow me to share a few examples as to why I'm slowly being driven batty by designs that are simply too stark for my taste. Just recently, AisleOne launched a new web design that is white space and text. There's a few images, of course, and in another growing trend (which I am freely using in a redesign of my own), a great deal of links to further content at the bottom of the page. This is all well and good, of course, but from a visual perspective, I'm not completely sold. I'm not even contemplating the sale. In fact, the salesmen is a broad-shouldered guy in a neat suit with a megawatt smile clapping me on the back heartily and making thinly veiled references to "a real beauty" and "get a nice fella's attention with this". He wears a pinky ring. I don't like pinky rings on men.
To begin with, the navigation is easily the best part of the design: there it is! Hard to miss. I might prefer something color-wise that sets it apart, but that's not even necessary on this site due to the negative space around it. Opening it to show archives and categories is pretty slick, even. But then, I find myself at a loss as to where to go. What am I looking at? Why is there so much whitespace? Where is the blog entry? Is it that little bit on the right? No, wait, there's two! I'm reading the right one first, is that okay? No, it's out of order? Dang. Is that a link? Is the black text clickable? It's too close to the gray! How do I know it's a link without reading every single word to see if there's textual cues? Why do I have to read every single word if I'm just looking for salient points and something to click? No hover style? I'm not the dumbest blonde on the internet, but this site makes me spend that much longer to figure out where to go. I am among the lazy brunettes on the internet.(Just a crazy redhead: I'm covering my hair color bases.)
My inner designer's eye has developed a tic.
Now the catch, ready for this? The sharp of eye may have noticed that AisleOne is a blog devoted to typography and minimalist/modernist design. Gasp! That explains so much, doesn't it? Their site design has embraced the very nature of their content, and the intellectual in me thoroughly approves. AisleOne gets a standing ovation for putting content and design firmly hand in hand. But that said, any website (like any piece of art) that forces me to linger over it, fingers itching for a half-caf french vanilla latte thick in foam and topped with cinnamon and a slice of lemon on the side, and consistently tell myself, "No, I like it, it's intellectual, and since I want to be intellectual, I totally get it!" is not for me.
Also, I take my coffee straight drip.
All that said, I fundamentally love the whole point of the website. I just can't get the information I need out of it with the ease I've come to expect from informational websites. Is this my failing or theirs? I'm completely honest enough to admit it could be either/or or both. I am lazy.
But let's bring out another to compare. Jason Santa Maria has taken a minimalist design — big fonts, lots of negative space — with the 'info at the footer' trend, and added a tweak: every article showcases different themes.What he's done differently is applied enough variation to his design elements to make them stand out. I know what the links are at a glance. I can see keywords and quotes at a glance. The navigation is easy to pick out and, okay, I admit it, the text is big enough for me to read without my glasses.I may not like every single design, but I can read it.
Please don't get me wrong: I am all for simple. I'll take simple over cluttered any day, because in the end, too simple means less stuff I have to read to find what I need to begin with. Not to mention, on the smaller screen of my iPhone, simple beats out the sheer chaos of various other websites out there, hands down. My inner designer may twitch at the too literal definition of minimalist design, but she goes absolutely rabid when it comes to too much clutter on a web page. I should also point out that these are the views of one novice web designer with a lot to learn, and it could be that there is some sort of intellectually-inspired definition of "minimalist" or "modernist" or "cheesecake" that I am not aware of. What I can say, boldly and without apology, is that I don't like too little, and I hate too much. But I can respect the thought that went into either.
Minimalisters: Add a little something, though. Save my brain the process of having to try to figure out what is a link and what isn't?