We see it every year. New trends come along, old trends die. Those that are working stick, those that don’t fade off into the distance. As technology evolves, designers are gaining more and more freedom to explore.
Brands aren’t looking to fit in anymore, they want to stand out, so we’ve uncovered some of the newer trends that have been successful.
Intrinsic Design/Broken Grid
Understandably, the concept of a design grid rests in terms of an imaginary plane with horizontal and vertical lines used to help layout elements on the page or screen. With most websites, it’s easy to spot, as everything is lined up together, mostly. With a broken grid, you have items that are pushed around on the plane in a way that makes the grid feel less rigid, or broken.
Intrinsic design is a technique that can help a concept stand out from the crowd, drawing attention. ‘Intrinsic’ is defined as belonging to the essential nature or construction of a thing. Self-taught designer and developer Chen Hui Jing explains, “When we talk about the web as a visual medium, the canvas is the browser. Browser capabilities have reached a point where we can do a lot of creative things, using the tools and properties the way they were meant to be used – instead of hacks and workarounds to overcome the limitations of the browsers.”
Web layout tools like Flexbox, Grid, and Box alignment can give you fine-grained control of where you want to place your items.
New Uses For Color
The eye-pleasing trend of using softer and more natural, approachable color palettes is continuing. But not for everyone. We’ll probably see indie designers and makers’ companies carving out attention with bolder, more saturated, and opinionated colors. We’ll still see a heavy use of illustrations in an effort to humanize technology in general, and the brand, specifically.
Imagine a page that limits color to just one color, or none. A heavy constraint like that can actually help to enhance a design and make it more memorable to a viewer.
Gradients provide subtle visual interest without being too pushy, and they don’t compete with text. Used skillfully, gradients can help draw viewer’s focus to the most important information or calls to action on your website.
Mobile-First
Mobile devices are the most popular way to access the internet and your web design needs to support those mobile users. With the shift towards mobile-first indexing, more and more websites are adopting a mobile-first approach to interactions. Responsive design and mobile apps will continue to rise.
Responsive web design adapts to the size and shape of the device screen used to view your site. It can provide a greater user experience for everyone who visits your website. Many companies are even designing responsive logos to accommodate different screen sizes.
Ambient Design
The use of ambient aspects of websites is on the rise. Some of it can be attributed to changes in technological capabilities, but a lot of it is coming from the fact that we spend so much of our time looking at screens. A website may change over the course of several hours, making it easier for users to pick up on the change.
A website may change based on the time, location, or weather.
Inclusivity
Users are increasingly more diverse in their choices, lifestyles, and needs. Making room for and accommodating others should be second nature. Everyone is disabled at some point in time: whether you’re temporarily hard of hearing from an ear infection, or don’t always have use of your arms because you’re carrying around your newborn baby.
Building inclusive thinking into your design process doesn’t cost much, but the results are exponential.
Interesting White Space
Using white space effectively is no new trick, but what seems to be trending lately is the use of a lot of white space, or even using white space as the focal point of the content. Adding extra white space in areas that don’t necessarily need it, it becomes an important part of the design and more noticed by visitors. It’s being used more to make a statement.
With less clutter on a page, there’s little interference to get in the way of the message.
While it’s usually white, whitespace doesn’t have to actually be white. It can be any color, but the trick is for the space to be devoid of copy, graphics, or photos.