In my view, minimalism is in the refinement of something, to the point where everything non-essential is removed. My blog, for example, is not a minimalist design; despite the fact that it uses a minimum of graphic decoration and lots of white space.

I don’t think it’s necessarily laziness that makes some web designers gravitate towards minimalism, or indeed simplification; for certain applications (like blogs), it’s an ideal way to avoid the site’s design detracting from the content, which is after all the most important thing. And it’s by no means easy to create a good looking layout with the bare minimum of elements.

Am I being minimal?!

Yes.

and further I go, the more I understand that complicated heavy site is not the one that user wants to come back to.

for me minimalist design is not equal to naked text. it is the one that contains some mystery. some technical feature. many effects can be produced via CSS, but there are few people ready to make it. minimalism is the rest for eyes and thoughts.

my site http://koshak.blogspot.com seems to lack all of that, I suppose. i hate any banners or anything like that. But still I’m in confuse. How do you think, should it be redesigned?

I have spent the last month reading and studying minimalist design and have discovered that the true minimalist designs are those that have thought what to leave out from the design without removing substance, where novices will just take a design and remove certain features of the design or reduce colour ranges and produce a grey on white with a hint of luminous green or pink.

It is a lot more than this and i will continue to study this art until i feel i understand what i need to do to produce a minimalist design with respect to the art of minimalism.