I was talking with a few skinners last night on IRC and the discussion of "minimalist" skins came up. It seemed everyone has a different take on what they consider minimal.
Some seem to consider a skin with hardly no buttons, and almost the same color as minimalist, and some seem to have a completely different view.
Now this is not a WB vs. .msstyles discussion, this is about skins in general. I'd like to know what you consider to be a minimalist skin.
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features.
Skinwise I think the more overall flatness a skin has the more minimal it is I consider Mirev2 more a minimal skin than v1 for example, or case and maximhuz stuff is really minimal, while I think that my own stuff has become less minimal cause I try to build in lots of fancy mouseovers and stuff, cause I wanna have it look minimal but when using I enjoy havin the fancy mouseover and dropdownbuttons and stuff. Another example, a lot of people consider areao4 minimal, which I don't, the first version maybe a bit more but the 2nd version got so many welldesigned fancy ellements like the tabs for example and lot's of stuff that is way to detailed that it could be considered minimal nevertheless there are a lot of minimal ellements included as well, like flat bars etc, still this is imo one of the best if not the best designed visualstyle out there.
Well said bit about Are04.2 tho. That VS appeals to me a lot because it is minimaitic while not being stripped down to the bone as a lot of others. Nano for example is one VS by the same group of people? not sure, anyway that was beautiful to look at but horrible to use ^^ Its a fine line as Minimal does not merely involve stripping down according to me, but also retaining an element of functionality.
ooh, I got another good one, minimal is anything not found up on wincustomize.com :P
Minimal has a lot to do with the graphics involved. For my designs, I like to keep it simple. In essence what that means is streamlined, low profile, non gloss type graphics.
Now I'm not saying that if you include any of the above in your work that you can't classify it as minimal, because it's merely my opinion of what is not simple. I tend to notice that when you start adding gloss, creating big detailed, glowing buttons it can easily fall into the tawdry category real fast.
Some designers want to use every feature a skin engine has but they don't know how to implement them correctly.
Minimal, in relation to visual styles, to me means removing as much as possible and attempting to find ways of replacing functions, therefore allowing for further stripping down. Minimal in design is often associated with emptiness and large space. Space is a comoditiy, so by stripping objects away things appear more expensive and professional looking (think designer brand advertising and luxury stores). That's my opinion anyway.
