When does Minimalist Web 2.0 Design go too Far?

Every month a breath of new web design projects filter into our company. As our core expertise and business focus is custom web and software application development, my attention is more distant with regards to corporate design now-a-days. However, my eyes caught a project in the works and I thought to myself "When does minimalist web 2.0 design go too far?" What I mean by that is how clean and clutter free can a website get until the allure of the service or product falls by the wayside? There is definitely a happy means or "Zen" that needs to be reached during the design process.In web design, minimalism refers to the use of the smallest amount of images, colors, shapes, values and lines. The site is stripped down to the fundamentals required to convey the message. Minimalist web designs generally rely on type and simple shapes to do the communicating. This minimalist approach has evolved in some circles as the basis of web 2.0 design. The backbone of the web 2.0 era that ushered in blogs, videos, podcasts, wikis and online communities where people with common interests get together to share ideas, media, code and all types of information was meant to be more - not less, but designed in a way where information is easily accessed on a clean and simple layout. This is a far cry from the "massive content, image heavy with more features to shake a stick at" era which for the most of us, is a recent memory.

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