Blog Post #5 - Bad Minimalism

The website I decided to review for bad minimalist design is Gold Bear Hotel. Their approach to minimalist design falls flat in just about every area that minimalism should excel at in order to make a successful website.

The first falter is the layout itself. Their choice of arrangement, alignment and composition has no defining structure. Pictures and text don't line up to each other which does not give the site a cohesive feel. Unfortunately, this is not a problem that just effects the layout of one page, it continues throughout the entire website.

The type treatment is right out of the birth of the internet. Drop shadows are misused and only served to make a poorly-colored text even harder to read. The typography also isn't varied enough to actually make anything look interesting. The logo itself also showcases some bad typography, the 'Goldener Baer' placement needs to be rethought.

What little photography there is, does not look appealing. All the photographs are small and unaltered to give them their best colors and contrasts. The result is a rather dull, unstimulating view of their hotel when the photographs should showcase their hotel. The repeating background picture tends to conflict with some of the black text it resides behind. A better choice would be to set a white or lighter background behind the text, which would also give the site more structure.

On a more minor note, the site also has the perplexing tendency to put borders around buttons. This choice seems to just be redundant and unnecessary considering buttons already have their edges bordered out. The borders are completely unneeded and should be removed.

Minimalist design relies on each element being strong because each one is that much more important than if it was a different style of design. Unfortunately, the elements here are not strong and site collapses into bad design.

Blog Post #4

I chose to pick a minimalistic site because its a style that has to accomplish all the things a complex sites does, with fewer elements. Thus, those fewer elements have to be stronger in order to succeed. The website I chose is:

Behind Design

The website only utilizes a one column layout, the minimal of the minimum, and still displays the entirety of its content well.

Even though most of the elements present may only seem like the content itself, its the interactivity that makes it interesting. The body text is kept in a gray tone until you hover over it, which changes it to black, and makes it easier to read. These little subtle changes and additions strengthen the idea of having a minimal design. From the small texture that slowly fades out, to the back and forth movement of the element at the bottom of the page; these tiny elements separate the boring from the stimulating.


The color choice compliments the white well, and a lot of white space there is. The rest is usually a variation of grays. The navigation is even kept to a minimum with just having 3 pages, including the home page, so there is no excess of content. The entire layout feels very simple and very clean. The only complaint I have is towards the middle of each page's content, there's almost too much which and there needs to be something to break up the space on the page a little better (like the continuation of the shadow on the column). Too much of the white can overwhelm someone's eye.