The Scherzo theme is often described as minimalist, as in if you’re looking for a minimalist WordPress theme, try Scherzo. It’s not something I mind — after all, it’s not a bad thing to be equated with a popular shorthand term — but it got me thinking about what people really mean when they describe web designs as minimal or minimalist.

When people say they like minimalism often they don’t mean it

By which I mean — people like the look of spare, neutral unadorned stuff. I guess it implies wealth, taste and a certain smartness. However, people often don’t like the design choices that are made in order to achieve a minimalist look — I get lots of requests for header images, inbuilt navigation and all kinds of other bits and bobs that would make Scherzo lookless minimal.

(Incidentally, I don’t mind these requests at all. I’ve never used the term minimal to describe Scherzo; its only real purpose is to make reading blog posts easy, and there’s always a balance to be struck between implementing genuinely useful features and achieving minimalism.)

Good design is inherently minimalist

As it’s nonsensical to design a web page, site or WordPress theme that does any more than whatever its users want, the term minimalist is not particularly useful when it comes to describing web design. Designs are either good or bad; they either allow users to do what they’re meant to do with a minimum of effort (=good), or they don’t (=bad).

The term unadorned is perhaps more meaningful. A design can be both effective (or minimalist) and look florid or imperfect (as per some of the examples in this article on Wabi-Sabi). It can also look unadorned — the choice is part of whatever the designer is trying to communicate through the form of the text. (—Or the limitations of the designer.)