Web design trends are constantly changing, and at a very rapid pace! I personally enjoy buying design books, but my college professor advised me not to buy web-design books. He said that web design books are never current because by the time the book is published, there are already new ideas in the web world. (For example in 2013, flat design became “in-your-face” huge. And by 2014, designers wanted to start a revolution against it.) Point being: trends in web come and go quickly.
These are the five trends I see currently in the web design world.
1.) Sliders Going Away
At one point in time, every web site you visited had a slider. But now designers and clients are learning together that sliders may not work for everyone. Clients are also discovering that they don’t necessarily have photos for these sliders that they’re ordering, besides the fact that sliders don’t play well with responsiveness (especially if you overlay text over the images).
In place of sliders, designers are finding that well designed big header images can provide a better solution for the client’s needs. Well thought-out design in place of a slider, can help generate optimal strategy for the look and functioning of a web site.
2.) One Page Scroll Web Sites
One page websites with long scrolling functionality are now more popular than ever. This trend was partially ushered in by the mobile responsive revolution. It allows the designer to be smarter about dividing content, and laying sections out in blocks of information that can easily be shrunken down for mobile consumption.
From a user’s perspective, they’re able to scroll through the web site more efficiently and enjoy better content delivery on mobile.
3.) Minimalism
One page scroll web sites and mobile responsiveness really pushed for minimalism. When designing a website that’s simple for the user to scroll through quickly, designers recognize that everything needs to be super easy to read at a fast pace. This means no clunky widgets, no div boxes floating everywhere. Everything should be easy to absorb at a glance by the user. Think about what you’d say to a potential client in a 30 second elevator speech; that’s what minimalism shoots for.
Minimalism challenges the designer to focus more on the meat of what the client is trying to convey. Gone are the days where all the information is crammed into a website like a newspaper. Now more than ever, strategy and message are more important.
4.) Better Typography
I remember 7 years ago, I had only a handful of fonts that worked on the internet. Arial, Georgia, Verdana, Tahoma, Times, and…. Well, you get the point. Now there are so many web font resources, designers can get creative with their typography again.
Outlets like Typekit, Google Fonts, etc are providing the internet with huge libraries of type faces that allow designers to have options again when selecting fonts for their client’s websites. Now when designing, fonts help convey a company’s personality.
5.) Subtle Transition Effects
Something that has slowly worked its way into every website is subtle transition effects. Good transition effects are done carefully and not jarring, which is why many users don’t notice the transition effects. But more than ever, design studios are focusing on this helpful asset.
Whether it’s mouse-overs, loaders, or page-changers, transition effects are helping to usher in a smoother age of web experience for users.
