For as long as the internet has been in existence, web design trends have come and gone. Some trends have persisted and others have gone away. In year 2013, the industry was changing faster than ever. New methods and techniques were introduced each month, or even more frequently!
A trend is defined as the general direction and prevailing tendency of change or development.
This is certainly the case for web design trends, a concept or design movement will occur, gain traction, and then many other designers will adopt the concept or technique. Trends assist us to gain an understanding of the direction web design is heading in the near future.
Trends offer several advantages to designers. Trends assist us in predicting how to create designs that will be useful in the near future. Trends usually occur in order to address a problem or issue that is cropping up on the web, and they help us to understand the future direction of the industry. Trends can also help to keep the sites updated with a new look, as webmasters are often encouraged to act when they read about the latest design trends, since they don’t want their sites to appear outdated.
There are some trends that don’t necessarily pertain to design. For instance, content-first methods of design were originally called a trend, since it was a popular method for incorporating content into a design. These types of trends can be advantageous, since they improve processes that are utilised when creating web designs.
However, trends are not always beneficial. Even though they can spur webmasters to update their sites, they can also make existing sites appear obsolete, even though they may only be a year old. Therefore, web designs that are designed to follow current trends, may become quickly outdated.
Popular trends can also result in numerous websites having a similar look and style. Many designers feel as if trends cause designers to follow the crowd, rather than coming up with their own unique solutions.
There were quite a number of trends being used. We had reviewed several of them below.
This can also be referred to as a clean design or a relatively simple and uncluttered design approach. Flat designs do away with extra embellishments such as gradients, textures, and 3 dimensional aspects that are replaced with a crisp, clean, flat aesthetic.
Flat designs tend to work quite well on mobile devices and some large companies are making use of them. Google, in particular, uses flat designs in almost all of their product offerings. Flat design embraces clarity and functionality over fancy aesthetics. Apple also uses this approach with iOS7.
At first this appeared to be a trend that would disappear. Nevertheless, since browsers are constantly evolving and being updated, this trend has become another aspect of website design.
Now that @font-face and CSS3 have been introduced, brand messages and designs can now be expressed via typography in a manner that we were unable to do in the past. In the past, we could only use system fonts that were “websafe” like Atrial and Georgia, but now there are many different font options, provided they are compatible with web-font.
Accompanying the creation of a @font – face came services that provide a simpler mechanism for incorporating these new fonts into our sites. Several of these helpful services include:
Since browsers are continually evolving, and the choices that are provided to designers with the advent of web fonts is huge. Designers can now be more creative with their designs and web fonts, add fuel to this trend.
This popular trend has developed over the last year. A lot of sites use a large header that is full width of the top portion of their site. However, it is now blurred, making it easy to overlay text.
This is a fairly minor trend, but it demonstrates how sites can quickly begin to have a similar look. Nevertheless, if you use excellent photography, it’s a means to demonstrate your individuality and make your site appear unique, especially, if you design it in such a manner that it is interactive for site visitors.
Another popular trend is responsive website design. Even though responsive design has been in existence for a couple of years now, it is still in its infancy. Responsive design is probably a trend that is here to stay for quite some time. Since web accesses by mobile devices are quickly taking over the internet, responsive design is likely to be used as long as these varying mobile devices are in existence.
Trends should provide designers with an impetus to be creative and not simply engage in group think. Nevertheless, trends can be useful and give designers some insight into the thinking of the general public and the design community.
Trends can provide designers with some clues regarding design features that work well and therefore some aspects of trends can help you decide upon aspects of your future designs. Keeping up with design trends can help you in this regard, even if you choose to adapt them to your own unique designs.