My Take on Minds' Graphic Design

Introduction

I have been a professional software engineer for over 15 years and 10 of those years were spent working on GUIs. As such, I have formed some opinions based on my working with professional Graphical Designers at large corporations. I am not a Graphical Designer myself.

This post does not address UX components in general. If you wish to see a post that addresses user flow and common issues on the site navigation see the following:
Minds New Interface
Further Review of Minds New Interface

Synopsis

My main complaint is the borders. Borders should only be used to focus attention, not to delineate elements within the page.

Minds Borders

As can be seen here, each element within the page has a border, including the searchbar, the top right surrounding the wallet, the top left logo, etc etc.
There is no directional focus towards the posts on the newsfeed.

Instagram Borders

As you can see, borders here are minimal. There is a border around the post itself. The top bar is just that, a bar and not a "border" in appearance due to the gradient that they used as the border. No individual element within the top bar is surrounded by a unique border save the indented Search, which is an entire element that consists of the same color as the body's background.

The stories as a separate border which raises it above the background/backdrop of the page, as do the individual posts that are contained within the timeline.

This is clean, simplistic, and allows the user to focus on the content, rather than focusing on the segments of the page.

Twitter Borders

Shown here, twitter is somewhere in between Minds and Instagram. They have opted to have a border between the three vertical segments of the page, plus a border between each block in the center segment. Other than that and the "New to Twitter", all others are delineated by color changes without a separate border color.

Theirs is not as clean as Instagram, but still facilitates the focus of the user towards the areas of the screen that are "of interest" (as determined by the Graphics Designers).

Pinterest Borders

Pinterest is the most extreme for lack of borders. It directs 100% focus on the pictures, allowing text to fall into the background. I believe that this is intentional, thus they have achieved it well.

Conclusion

Minds is a different beast that the aforementioned social media giants. The content provided lies primarily between Instagram and Twitter, with a few exceptions (namely the blogs). However, the rule still applies that the Content Is King, and should be treated as such.

Below I have done markup and I will provide my explanation here.

The red and orange mark where to have gradient style edges to give a raised 3D effect. The Top/All button and search bar area would need to be readdressed in general. Also note that I tried not to mess with the current color scheme too much, but some alterations might be necessary to produce a more modern feel.

I enjoy this website and hope that this helps make it look more professional so as to attract a larger client base.