Less is More & More is Less

"Less is more" is the notion that simplicity and clarity lead to good design.

This is a 19th century proverbial phrase. It is first found in print in Andrea del Sarto, 1855, a poem by Robert Browning:

Who strive - you don't know how the others strive

To paint a little thing like that you smeared

Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,-

Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,

(I know his name, no matter) - so much less!

Well, less is more, Lucrezia.

The phrase is often associated with the architect and furniture designer Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe (1886-1969), one of the founders of modern architecture and a proponent of simplicity of style.


"Less is more" is the phrase as adopted by the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as a precept for minimalist design.  As designers, we all know that a minimalist design can achieve beautiful results. Still, many designers have trouble creating one; either they have a hard time making a page with so few elements look good or the final result just doesn’t look “complete.” There are many articles on the Web about minimalism and this article aims to help you achieve a minimalist design that is beautiful but not bare.

As mentioned, minimalism brings the most important content to the forefront and minimizes distractions for the user. If a page has too many elements, the viewer will be confused about where to look or misinterpret the priority of each element. A minimalist design puts the focus squarely on the content.

Any splash of color on a black-and-white design, for example, is sure to get the user’s attention. The color itself becomes the focal point. Let’s look at a specific example:

You’ve probably seen this kind of design before: plain white background, one block of content and one graphic element.

The graphic element brings color, texture and shape. It is clearly the most important element on the page, and it defines the designer’s brand and identity.

With the complexity of this particular graphic element, more content on this page would have made it less noticeable, and less important. Keeping the content to a minimum, the designer has achieved the perfect balance.