10 Minimalist but Spicy Ideas For Web Design Beginners

Updated September 2026: we checked all ten sites from 2011. Four are still online; the six that have gone are replaced with current minimal sites.

Hello and welcome back to another post of mine. This time I wanna focus my attention on the web design beginner that just made the first little baby steps in the mysterious world of HTML-CSS-PHP coding and that would love to create a simple, attractive website but they’re worried that this might require a lot of time other than a deep knowledge of the Html language.

Having a visually stunning website with lots of things moving on it isn’t a synonym of coolness (coolness intended as easy to browse and pleasant for the eyes).

This Vlog website is very nice, coloured and eye-catching, but slow to browse and somewhat confusing cause if you miss the click, another website will open up instead of the one you wanted. 10 marks for the concept but you’ll visit it once or twice to show it to a friend and that’s it.

Personally, I tend to prefer the minimalist design. Few colours, few bells & whistles but where all works and where even if you keep your design simple, you can still catch the attention of your visitors. And trust me….black and white, if used in the right way, can pretty much kill any color-enhanced design. Even as a web design beginner, it’s not about the quantity of stuff you fill your site with, but the quality and passion you put into a design, even if it’s a basic one.

And this is what I wanna talk bout’ today: I’ll go through a list of 10 nice, clean, minimal websites that I’ve checked out lately and that even a web designer beginner can recreate with a CMS like WordPress, the help of some plugins (for the sliders,etc unless the chosen theme features these as part of the package) and patience, a lot of patience.

It’s time to take a look then!

1. Frank Chimero

frankchimero.com

Frank Chimero is a New York-based designer and this is about as minimal as a portfolio gets: no images at all, just his name and a short column of links to his studio, his book, a collage series and the post archive, in small type on dark grey. As a web design beginner, it’s proof you don’t need a single photo to make a site feel considered.

2. Sofa

http://www.madebysofa.com

At first, looks very minimalist as design, but as soon as u start clicking around a lot of stuff pops up, especially those four beautifully colored icons in the “products” area, definitely breathtaking.

Shame that Sofa, the company behind the design isn’t active anymore as they were acquired by Facebook in 2011. Their career started in 2006 but as they mention on the website “our products live on”…and I’m sure of that.

Technically speaking, both Ajax and JQuery are used there in the source code and from what I can see the fonts in use are the “cheap” Brandon Grotesque Regular, Bold, & Light.

And if you’re still staring at those colored icons…have a look here

Update, September 2026: the address now shows a simple “We Were Sofa” page, with links to the people, the products and an archive of the old site.

3. Maurice Naef

http://mauricenaef.ch

Another portfolio but a different owner, this time we have Maurice Naef. The predominance of gray tones for this WordPress-based site, clean structure, and a high-quality photo of himself on the ‘about’ page is part of those aspects that make the website look professional and clean by keeping the area free. In fact, an example is the “service” link that goes straight to the point in terms of content. Nice footer with a little slider on the bottom left computer icon that makes it more “alive”. The font used is called “Kameron” and it’s a Google font while the theme is a custom one. So you see, another WP website.

Update, September 2026: Maurice Naef is now a web developer in Winterthur, Switzerland, and the site has been redesigned, built with Astro and promoting lean, fast websites.

4. James Chambers

and once clicked on the menu ‘The Gesundheit Radio”…

http://jameschambers.co.uk

With its really minimalist design, it’s probably what I would define a “starting point” for every web design beginner.

The thing is that even if the images are put there as they are without any shadow or some special CSS trickery…still looks clean as design. Personally i like that clickin’ on the images, the linked page is open toward the top and not toward the bottom as one would think. This one runs under Cargo but is easily replicable with WP.

Update, September 2026: James Chambers now describes himself as a designer, developer and founder building Boords, and his home page is almost all text.

5. Paco Coursey

paco.me

Paco Coursey is a designer and engineer, currently webmaster at Linear, who previously worked on Vercel’s design system. His site is just text: a one-line introduction, then three small columns of projects and writing.

6. Rauno Freiberg

rauno.me

Rauno Freiberg is an Estonian interaction designer working with Vercel. The home page opens with big type over a yellow circle, then links out to his writing and projects, and closes with a line that sums up this whole list: “Make it fast. Make it beautiful.”

7.Tim Bjørn

http://madebytim.com/

Tim Bjørn, based in Copenhagen – Denmark, it’s a graphic designer-illustrator fueled by the talent that started his career without any formal education. Took him 4 years to switch to “solo” mode and work in his own studio.

As he describes himself, his style is cool but not warm, respectful, simple.

Even his website could be a good source of inspiration for a web design beginner that wants to stay “minimal” but still able to express themselves at their best. Was about to check if runs on WP but, ironically, the website is down….

Update, September 2026: the site is back online, and is now the most minimal one on this whole list: his name, “Graphic Design & Illustration”, a contact link and a single illustration.

8. Lee Robinson

leerob.com

Lee Robinson, an engineer and writer, keeps his site to a short bio, a list of notes and a list of blog posts, next to one tall illustration.

9. Craig Mod

craigmod.com

Craig Mod, a writer and photographer, mixes short text with a handful of photos, his books and a newsletter sign-up. The site runs on Hugo, a static site generator, a good option if you want something fast without a database.

10. teenage engineering

teenage.engineering

Minimal doesn’t have to mean a personal portfolio. This electronics company’s menu is thin type, short lower-case labels and simple black icons, with one big illustration underneath for whatever they’re launching.

And that’s it…we reached #10!

From the original list: Second & Park, Bolster, Alastaire Allday, Bianca Elmer, Ribbons Of Red and PostMachina are no longer online.

But let me suggest to you some more links that are worth a visit

I was supposed to post this article earlier but I’ve spent a lot of time checkin’ those links cause they’re really cool…

http://giangnguyendesign.com/

http://www.routalempi.fi/

http://www.lecoqsportif.com

http://neverbland.com/

http://www.brandberry.nl/

http://shopshoeguru.com/

http://benhulse.com

http://www.dsemotion.com/

http://www.markwieman.com/

Web Design Beginner Course

If you want to learn more about web design and how to make wonderful websites in a short time with the minimum efforts, check out our Beginner’s Web Design Class

Keep reading

Article10 Fitness Websites To Inspire YouRead the tutorialDesignBest SaaS Websites for UX/UI Design in 2026Read the tutorialDesign10 Ways to Help Plan Your WebsiteRead the tutorial