Minimalist Design

Minimalism is a style that uses toned down design elements. Minimalist designs use organic and geometric shapes to form objects that the designer is trying to portray. Most minimalist designs are flat in shape but can look "3D" with the application of a darker shade to symbolise shadows and depth.

Here's a brief history of Minimalism [source: spyrestudios.com]

Minimalist started in the early 20th century with architecture, roughly around the 1920s. Post-World War I architect Van der Rohe was one of the first prominent architects who used principles in his designs that came to exemplify minimalist design. The reason minimalist architecture started taking off was the availability of modern materials: glass, concrete, steel. Also, standardized ways of building were forming, which helped to more effectively design and build minimalist buildings. The trend continued through the mid-20th century, with notable designer and architect Buckminster Fuller (more on him below) designing domes using simple geometric shapes that still stand and look modern today.
The focus on simplicity spilled over into painting, interior design, fashion, and music. That’s how the following were formed and are now commonplace: minimal painting, minimal music, the minimalism school of composing, and so forth. Painter Frank Stella was quoted as saying, “What you see is what you see”. Minimal art in particular especially grew in the 1960s in America. Similar to De Stijl, painters reacted against the abstract-expressionism art and used only the rudimentary geometric shapes in their works and didn’t add decorations or any other elements. Read more...

Minimalist designers go by mottos such as

Less is more.

and

Doing more with less.

To compensate for its simple design, minimalist designers uses BOLD fonts and popping colours to capture attention. Example of colours used in minimalist designs are such as: