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Minimalism has been the way design has leaned for many years now, but is it always the right choice? Less isn't always more, and many non-minimalist design styles may be able to answer design needs better than minimalism can.
August 16, 2024
8
minute read
When it comes to design, minimalism has been the way everything has leaned for many years now. There’s been plenty of discussion out there about if it has become stale, if its time has passed, and if maximalism is the appropriate response to it. From the perspective of this graphic designer, I would like to illuminate why minimalism has gone far beyond any of its original merits, how it sometimes fails at its base claims, and how maximalism can be an answer.
If you look at an art history definition of Minimalism, you’ll find a movement started by artists who were rebelling against a previous period of art. I am not interested in critiquing these original aspects of the movement. That would amount to one of my least favorite attitudes surrounding art, which is the “my child could make that” critique. I am fully in support of pieces that challenge what we consider to be art. Complex, hard-to-master technique is admirable, but it is not the be-all and end-all of art.
Instead, the minimalism I am critiquing involves more recent movements to simplify design to its bare essentials—where absolute practicality reigns over every other aspect. The main areas of minimalism I will be pointing to will be the minimalist lifestyle, minimalist interior design, minimalist product design, and minimalist graphic design.
Today, I would define these categories of minimalism by the removal of all design elements until only the absolutely “necessary” elements remain. As few words as possible, as few colors as possible, as little objects as possible, as little of everything as possible. Minimalism’s motto is “less is more.”
Maximalism is not just a modern trend in response to current day minimalism — there have been past phases of maximalism in art, design, literature, music, and other realms of art. However, what I will be focusing on is contemporary maximalism, which is a response to the years of dominance minimalist aesthetics have had recently. Maximalists rebel against what they perceive as stale, corporate, lifeless stylings and respond with heaps of personality and little fear of mess.
Maximalist interior design includes a meaningful clutter of important objects in someone’s life creating a living space aesthetic unique to each individual’s personality.
Maximalism in graphic design can include lots of bold colors, complex or heavily repeated graphical elements and patterns, textures, expressive and/or excessive text, and as little white space as possible. Maximalism’s motto is “more is more.”
With minimalism and maximalism as design movements in mind, it’s time for an overly extensive—dare I say maximalist—approach to arguing my point that minimalism is not the enlightened end-goal of design it’s made out to be.
There’s an idea I’ve heard many times throughout my design education that if something is designed for everyone, it ends up being for no one. In other words, there is a perceived safety in creating something broadly appealing that doesn’t rub up against anyone’s particular tastes negatively rather than something that’s love-it-or-hate-it because it only appeals to a niche audience. But in trying to appeal to that broad of an audience, what is created becomes something too bland for anyone to hate, but also too bland for anyone to love.
This idea is also relevant to accessibility in design—for example, if a designer is trying to make the “perfect” chair, it would be a mistake to try and make one perfect chair that everyone in the world can be comfortable in. It would be better to abandon the idea of the “perfect” chair and instead design multiple chairs for different people’s needs.
I believe we should accept that taste in design is truly subjective, aim the design to the audience that will want it, and be comfortable with it not appealing to everyone outside of that audience. In marketing, it would certainly help to know the people you’re going for, designing for them, and not wasting time trying to appeal to everyone else.
21st century corporate minimalist design attempts to create as little friction as possible against people’s unique and individual tastes. By doing this, only the essential and practical information is on display, and there is nothing (subjectively) visually offensive that might push certain people away. Non-minimalistic design must choose a more distinct style, and that style may tell certain people that the product or service is not for them (which can be a good thing!).
In many cases, the quest for minimalism can even remove more than just the non-practical elements, making things harder for everyone just for the sleek, clean style of it all. Here are some examples of current design choices that consumers deal with that cut out a little too much for the sake of minimalism:
BEFORE MINIMALISM: Cars with tons of ugly knobs, levers, and buttons.
AFTER MINIMALISM: Just a touchscreen, so you can legally drive distracted while spending an extra minute trying to find the AC.
BEFORE MINIMALISM: Antiquated paper food menus that have everything you need but could give you paper cuts!
AFTER MINIMALISM: A QR code menu system that is dependent on technology limitations, responsive design, internet connection, and gets everyone on their phones.
BEFORE MINIMALISM: Retail packaging telling you what’s unique about the product through effective stylistic choices.
AFTER MINIMALISM: Your eyes are saved from colors, patterns, and textures. Now it’s white packaging with the name of the thing on it.
BEFORE MINIMALISM: Technology having all of the ports you need to do things.
AFTER MINIMALISM: Technology ditches those awful ports, and soon we will finally have a metal brick with zero ports and no screen.
I think it’s also important to point out in all of those examples, that there may also be a financial incentive hiding behind a supposed aesthetic choice: For example, making cars with just a touch screen without all of the physical knobs and buttons is known to be a much cheaper way to produce cars.
When it comes to why so many people believe so strongly in minimalism, while many arguments in favor of it cite an admirable anti-consumerist or anti-materialistic reason, I would actually argue that there is an inherently capitalist, toxic productivity based reason lurking underneath.
So is the minimalist lifestyle really anti-consumerist, anti-materialistic, and anti-capitalist?
First off, minimalism may arguably be more of a lifestyle of the financially well-off because it’s easier to afford to replace things when you know you will be able to afford it. A less well-off person may be inclined to keep many items “just in case” because they don’t know for sure whether they’d be able to afford replacing them.
As for whether keeping non-practical items is materialistic, I believe this feeds into an idea that only purely practical things are useful or good. For example, the idea of the quick meal-replacement nutrient shake has always bothered me, because it poses the implication that taking time out of your day to prepare and enjoy a good meal is a waste of time or even over-indulgent and hedonistic. But for the sake of productivity these products ask us to devote more time to work and less time to figuring out and preparing healthy meals. Why work less when you can choke down nutrient sludge?
I’m here to say enjoying things is good actually, and you don’t need to justify it by deeming it practical or wholly necessary. Enjoy a good meal, enjoy a good knick-knack. Don’t feel guilty.
And as for minimalism as it pertains to capitalism, while I do think a minimalist lifestyle could be approached in a way that could be considered anti-capitalist, I feel today it’s more pro-capitalist in practice, because by removing all household distractions, where does our life experience lie? At work?
Since the pandemic made so many more jobs remote and corroded many public experiences, it became more necessary to find hobbies and have experiences at home. I do encourage safely finding ways to get out and “touch grass” as they say, but I also want to acknowledge that it’s harder than ever to find places that aren’t work after work, and when we’re at home we shouldn’t be living in just another distraction-less white-walled workplace.
Keeping in mind all of the points covered thus far, there certainly can be a place for minimalist design; graphics, UI, web, packaging, etc. But often today, it merely serves to take out all of the personality and flavor from a design and leaves the viewer with just the information they need with nothing there to flavor it. A tasteless nutrient sludge.
When it comes to non-minimalist design styles, the goal should still be basic design principles like bringing the eye to the important info and skillfully communicating an idea visually, but keeping in the action and personality that minimalism removes.
To illustrate this using the most extreme opposite to minimalism, I will now show some maximalist graphic design examples.
Minimalism—despite where it may have begun—has failed to combat hyper-capitalist design. In fact, it has become synonymous with sterilized, corporate design, and in response we see a new wave of rebellion to this type of minimalist design in the form of aggressively non-minimalist or even maximalist design trends. I welcome these new design trends and bid the bland supplemental replacement of a proper good meal goodbye.
Well… minimalism is probably here to stay for a while. But let’s resist and add a little flavor where we can.
