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Design Technology Trends UI Design UX Design Web Design

The Rise of Minimalism in Graphic Design

Minimalism

Minimalism has been continuously evolving to be one of the most popular trends in various creative fields, including graphic design. The key traits of a minimalistic design are simplicity, clarity, and functionality over extreme ornamentation and artistic complexity. 

In the recent times, the use of minimalism in graphic design can be seen rising at a greater pace, with a large number of designers embracing its neat and subdued aesthetic. 

Here are the main characteristics that mark the virtues of minimalism in graphic design:

Limited Color Palette

Minimalism in graphic design follows the principle of using limited color palette. With the help of a few colors and limited shades graphic designers can achieve more sense of harmony and composure in their designs that is considered to leave a good impact on audiences. 

With minimalism, graphic designers are able to establish a consistent visual identity for a brand or product. To take an example, if we talk about the tech giant Apple, its minimalist design approach makes it keep it between white, black, and gray in everything related to its branding gear and product design. 

Negative Space

Minimal design is also about working on the use of negative space (also known as white space). It is the vacant or vacuum area around and between design elements. As designers are able to use negative space effectively, it allows them to deliver a sense of clarity, receptiveness, and openness in their designs. 

This helps in building more focus on important areas, such as the elevator pitch, product image, or a call-to-action, and command a better response from the audiences.

Typography 

Typography is another important element of minimalism in graphic design. By minimalizing your typeface and fontal entity you can effectively establish a simplistic channel of design. Here, you can use cleaner lines and sans-serif fonts to achieve it more effectively across the line of presentation. 

With this approach graphic design professionals are able to compellingly build on the traits of legibility and readability. This makes it easier for viewers to understand the message and get more clarity about the expression without making much efforts. 

Most leading businesses these days are going with the idea of minimalist typography for their branding purposes to stand out as a more confident, recognizable, and perceptive brand.

Sophisticated Artform 

Apart from everything, minimalism can convey a sense of sophistication and elegance in any type of graphic design. With its nominal art references, clean expressions, and responsive tonal agreement, designers can create a sense of impact by making their graphic designs more effortless and receptive for the target audiences. This makes more graphic design companies and professionals to now increasingly opt for minimalism in their designs.

Versatility

Minimalism adds to the versatility of designs. Minimalist designs offer open-ended mechanism to address any context and idea of communication. From brand assets and marketing creatives to web layouts and user interface designs, it can help any of the design resources to pitch and convey the underlying idea of the communication more cohesively.  

Apart from this you can simply adapt or recreate it to be used in different branding channels and communication mediums, such as print, digital, and mobile.

To Conclude 

The rise of minimalism in graphic design suggests of the growing demand for simplicity, clarity, and functionality in design. By adopting the minimal approach designers are increasingly seeking versatile, adaptability, and cohesively in designs. With this, it is likely that we will see minimalism to be a more intrinsic and frequent part of the design process and will rule the factors that decide eligibility and performance of the work of graphic design ahead of here. Contact our team of experts today to learn more.

Read more about minimalistic website designs here.

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Brand & Identity Design UI Design

When To And When Not To Use Dark Themes?

Dark Themes

The dark theme or the dark mode design has been trending from quite some time now. It became seemingly famous across the world of the internet when Google adopted it for Google drive. It did receive an excellent response from all nooks and corners of the world; however, that doesn’t mean that every business or website can pull off a dark theme. What are the factors that need to be considered before deciding on using dark themes? When should you use dark themes? When should you avoid a dark theme? Let’s check it out.

The Dark Themes Can Be Used When You Want To:

  • Emphasize visual content
  • Enhance emotional branding
  • Go minimalistic
  • Match your brand colors
  • Improve usability

Emphasize Visual Content

A dark theme is perfect for making visual applications and websites stand out. The deep, substantial backgrounds provide the much needed high-contrast backdrop for images, graphics, videos, and visuals of any shape and color. It elevates the visual hierarchy as the lighter visual content stands out against the dark background; Especially if you’re using large, high-contrast images. If images are playing the lead role in your application, or website, and a copy is a sidekick, consider a dark color palette.

Enhance Emotional Branding

A dark theme needs much more blank space to avoid looking chaotic and cluttered. Thus, dark applications and websites tend to elicit stronger emotions than light ones. Color psychology also impacts the emotional appeal. Generally, we associate dark colors, primarily black, with mystery, power, elegance, and drama. Therefore, when a dark background is paired with some high-contrast, big images, the finished output looks stunning.

This mood-setting strategy works beautifully and frequently appears on product pages and entertainment applications. Apple’s iOS 13 page uses a dark color scheme to make their product seem more sophisticated and elegant. Similarly, the Halo App’s dark theme makes it look more dramatic. However, a lightly-colored website or app can be just as impactful. Choosing the right color scheme depends entirely upon what emotions you want your brand to evoke.

Go Minimalistic With Dark Themes

In case you already use a minimalist design that has limited content, your conditions are suitable for dark mode. In a situation where the text is the primary content, dark UI can make legibility an issue. Typically, dark mode amplifies visual clutter making a cluttered screen even more chaotic.

Match Your Brand Colors

When a brand’s existing color palette is already dark mode compatible, the dark mode is the way to go forward. Think twice about going dark if it seems like you have to change the brand to fit the aesthetic. Similarly, if your brand needs to use a wide spectrum of colors, consider a lighter UI. The full-color spectrum doesn’t read pleasantly on dark backgrounds.

Improve Usability

Sometimes, your app has to be dark to be user-friendly. For instance, apps designed for heavy nighttime use will employ a dark color scheme to avoid straining the user’s eyes. The trend is especially noticeable in entertainment apps like Netflix and Prime Video, but other applications offer a dark mode, too. Twitter lets users toggle between light and dark in the settings, and Google Maps automatically darkens at night.

However, the time of day isn’t the only usability factor to consider. If your application is intended to be used for hours without rest, a dark theme may minimize eye strain. That’s why dark themes are popular in code editors and financial apps.

You must avoid dark themes when your website or app has:

  • Lots of text
  • Lots of elements
  • Bright colors

Lots of Text

One of the most significant drawbacks of a dark color scheme is that it is terrible for displaying text. Light text on a dark background is hard to read. Dark themes are not suitable for interfaces with lots of copy. Not only do people have to spend more time reading the text, but the comprehending ratio also dips. On the other hand, dark text on a white background looks crisp, clean, and refined. The copy is easy to read and extremely legible. Browse across all major news and blogging websites, and you will find that they all have light backgrounds instead of dark ones. Your website should not have a dark theme if it contains lots of written content.

Lots of Elements

Finally, a dark theme can be a poor choice for apps and websites with lots of icons, buttons, and small images. That’s because of the dark background de-accentuate empty space. While de-emphasized empty space makes large images and minimalist pages elegant and dramatic, it makes small icons and dense pages look cluttered, unorganized, and unprofessional. Admin backend panels are a great example. The difference is even more obvious when you compare a light panel with a dark one. 

On dashboards, the dark theme does not look bad, but it does look denser. In some instances, that’s not a problem. However, the clutter problems don’t end here, because, with a dark color scheme, it’s hard to make each element stand out. Since a dark color scheme limits your color selection, it’s harder for a designer to maintain good contrast. This does not pose a problem if a page has a few key elements, but if a page contains several buttons, icons, menus, and banners, the overall design will look much less cluttered on a light background.

Bright Colors in Dark Themes

Dark themes also limit your color options. Too many bright colors can clash against the dark background and give your entire website a harsh and unfriendly appearance. While the occasional splash of color can add brilliant emphasis, most of your elements should be muted neutral colors.

Read more about how to use colors in web design here

There are a lot of advantages to using a dark theme:

  • It reduces the strain on eyes
  • It increases visibility in low-ambient lighting
  • Saves a lot of battery life
  • Gives an emotional boost 

But, you need to understand that one size doesn’t fit all, and hence the pointers mentioned above will help you in deciding if you must use a dark theme or not. Still, confused? Talk to our experts now!