Minimalism as a design philosophy has a precise intellectual genealogy: it runs through the Swiss International Style of the 1950s–60s (grid-based design, objective typography, the principle that form follows function), through the influence of Japanese Ma (間) — the concept of meaningful empty space — and through the work of designers like Massimo Vignelli, who stated that "the life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness."

The Swiss Style produced Helvetica (1957) and Univers (1957), two typefaces designed to be so optically neutral that they would not impose any stylistic character on the content — the ideal of the invisible container. This was a reaction against the decorative excesses of the preceding decades, an argument that good design was the elimination of everything unnecessary.

But minimalism is not absence of design — it is a discipline of attention. The decision about what to keep is harder than the decision about what to add. A composition with three elements requires each element to carry full weight; a composition with thirty elements allows any one of them to be weak. Minimalist design is higher stakes than ornamental design.