There are a lot of things I love about WordPress. Cluttered page layout with irrelevant information is not one of them.

Trend Central points out how so many web sites are moving toward a more image-heavy navigation, magazine style. Typical web site navigation and blog design are changing. Larger, higher-definition screens and faster downloads open new doors.

However, be careful not to use this flexibility as an excuse to overdesign. Jonathan Ive, lead designer at Apple, calls for a new approach to design, focused on heightened functionality, rather than visual clutter.

A lot of what we seem to be doing … is getting design out of the way. With that sort of reason, it feels almost inevitable, almost undesigned and it feels almost, like of course it is that way. Why would it be any other way?

Design should always be second to usability and content.

Information Architects say, “Technology often develops from primitive to complicated to simple.” They stress better interaction design and less graphic design.

This reasoning is best represented by the enormous success of sites like Facebook who rely on content sharing rather than clutter. MySpace is the antithesis of this simplified style. A classic example of overdesign, MySpace is falling out of mind to the cleaner, simpler user interface of Facebook.

Last night in about an hour I put together a quick child theme using the versatile iThemes Builder theme for my sister’s photography blog. She wanted a wider layout to display her photos, so I kept it simple with a wide content area. That is all it needed. Add a few simple pages for bio, contact and pricing and it’s done. Maximum of three hours including the header design and the site is done. (I used the new iThemes rotating images plugin for the header.)

Just clean lines and clean typography. It has been stripped to the essentials. I realize that this project demanded simplicity and some projects will have much more complex requirements. But the principle is the same. Eliminate excess. There are no sidebars with recent post widgets, or space-sucking category lists because they are redundant for this site. When these elements are helpful and necessary, they can add value to the design. But don’t feel like they are essentials to smart web design for every project.

1. Place emphasis on what is important by eliminating what isn’t.
2. Remember, visitors to the site did not organize it themselves. Make it easy, and obvious to navigate.
3. Don’t let design become a distraction to content.

Read what I’ve been reading about web design and usability trends here:

Trend Central: Web Design Makeovers
Information Architects: The Future of Web Design

UPDATE
1-21-10: YouTube introduces simplified user experience.

Google is quietly rolling out a new minimalist design for its YouTube video player pages, which it claims will be more appropriate for a wide range of content from the user-uploaded content that has always been a staple to feature-length films. By muting the “voice” of the old design, YouTube hopes to make videos stand out from everything else on its pages.

Read the rest of this article on Wired’s Epicenter Blog.