The philosophy described in this article sounds like a naive guess at what makes things usable instead of reading the mountains of actual research on the topic.
For example, it seems like one tactic for "simplicity" or "minimalism" is that nearly all the text is in the same font (same size, same font face, and mostly the same color).
That tells my brain that everything is of equal importance. It's confusing and actually has the opposite effect of "bring the information you’re there for to the forefront" (the goal the article describes).
Many buttons don't look clickable, many links don't look like links (because they're black or gray, like the rest of the text), and the whitespace is a disaster on my screen (line spacing is very condensed, margins are all over the place).
For example, it seems like one tactic for "simplicity" or "minimalism" is that nearly all the text is in the same font (same size, same font face, and mostly the same color).
That tells my brain that everything is of equal importance. It's confusing and actually has the opposite effect of "bring the information you’re there for to the forefront" (the goal the article describes).
Many buttons don't look clickable, many links don't look like links (because they're black or gray, like the rest of the text), and the whitespace is a disaster on my screen (line spacing is very condensed, margins are all over the place).