We are pleased to showcase the booming trends for 2019 in terms of the web design. In this article, we are focusing on the concepts that were identified in the visual and interaction aspect, which will be relevant to our users in a way to inspire them for their own web design projects.
Creating a consistent story with illustrations
Illustration represents a design component that makes any creation authentic because it brings the feel of the unique nature of art. These artistic examples can be seen even in the tech industry; let’s mention some of the greatest such as Slack, Airbnb, Mailchimp, Dropbox and WeTransfer that present art from different designers to alleviate the process of waiting and to bring positive associations with the brand.
Renowned illustrators take the most important role in creating this trend by giving their personal touch to modern web designs.
Typography-rich elements
Typography has always had an essential role in web design, and now it has evolved in something more visually appealing with more freedom and versatility and more aesthetic tendencies. With the progress of web platforms, issues such as legibility and compatibility of fonts are not a concern anymore.
Today, it’s not just about picking the right font and combine it well with others, it is more about using the right ‘copy’ as the key element of the design. Words are not just the meaning behind them, the illustration shapes that their characters create are the ones that make a difference.
The words, as graphic components are given accent by animations, distortions, special effects and mixes of different font families and weights that put together create a nice composition.
The use of variable fonts
Variable Fonts are still not being supported enough by the browsers, but they are definitely a trend to become familiar with. They represent the OpenType format of the font invented by four biggest technology companies – Google, Apple, Microsoft and Adobe. What makes these fonts unique it’s the fact that they contain a large amount of additional information, comparing to regular OpenType font. They own different versions of the typeface which can include multiple weights, widths, slants and sometimes even different styles such as Condensed, Italic, Underline, etc. Thanks to CSS, it is possible to get all these versions and create animated transitions between them. These fonts represent a huge twist for the typography, which is the most obvious in the field of responsive web design. Web designers are looking for more simplicity and more interactions when it comes to design apps, thus, the flexibility of these brand new fonts that can be customized with a single scroll are exactly what they need.
The world of animations
If you are looking for a flowing interactive UX that doesn’t affect load time significantly, creating animations for secondary components is the way to go. Thanks to some advanced tools such as Lottie and Bodymovin, it is possible to create some advanced animations that can be applied to your web design in multiple creative ways. The options are almost endless including different blending modes, filters, softening curves and many other controls of different variables. The most frequent elements that undergo these animations are definitely clip arts, but as mentioned before, typography is not an exception either.
Color tone trends
Due to strong competition on the web, website color trends are experiencing frequent changes, but still, they work in perfect sync and they are able to match particular industry and communicate a specific brand message effectively. In the world of modern web design, the omnipresence of brights is definitely worth of mentioning. Vibrant gradients, image overlays, and animations that enable color transitions are increasing in popularity. To give a more precise color trend guidelines we have picked three most popular color tones that were identified on the web in 2019.
Blazing red
“Red has guts …. deep, strong, dramatic. A geranium red. A Goya red … to be used like gold for furnishing a house … for clothes, it is strong, like black or white.”
Valentino
This bold color, perceived both as exciting and aggressive has always been used for grabbing attention, especially in the world of advertising. The dominant nature of this color makes it a risky choice when it comes to web design, but one thing is sure – it won’t be let unnoticed. It is just important to make sure that the use of fiery reds matches your overall brand image.
Source:https://www.pinterest.com/pin/448108231671573661/
Subtle whites
If you find the popular vibrants too much, opt for subtle white that will awake calm emotions and bring clear appearance to your web design. White is the color of trust and being neutral which makes it an ideal color to create the feeling of serenity. It gives a soft touch to any design and creates a nice contrast with other elements and sections. White is an ideal choice for contemporary brands that are looking to build an elegant, classy look that communicates without showing too much. This color is the key element of the well-known ‘more is less’ concept.
Shades of the Earth
The shades of the Earth are the ones that make us feel reunite with the nature and create the feeling of nostalgia. They evoke some positive memories such as pleasant walk in the forest, the smell of the sea, beautiful sunset by the river. If that’s the emotion that you want to create for your website visitors, choose greens, browns, yellows, corals and even some blues. The idea behind this trend is to make our eyes rest from the vibrancy of Instagram filtered photos that we see daily and make us feel comfortable, just like at home.
Deep and almost tangible design components
Virtual space is slowly turning into our everyday reality, and that’s exactly what web designers are trying to communicate today. Their vision is to create the sense of depth by showing website elements in a more realistic way. They use 3D effects and animated graphics on website elements so that the visitors can almost feel like they can physically touch them, which can be especially effective when it comes to e-commerce UX.
One-page websites
At one point, single page web design with the scroll was losing on the popularity, but this year was noticed as the trend to come back. Web designers are using scroll option to create a fluid UX and tell the story that will make the visitors interact. One-page design advantages are especially obvious on small screens because visitors have the access to everything without having to use the navigation menu that can interrupt their journey and affect the overall UX. As the largest number of websites user comes from mobile devices, and their tendency is to increase more, one-page concept together with the scroll feature could become the leading when it comes to web design.
Video content
Video is web design component that not only captures attention of the visitors, but also meets the needs of ‘rushing’ users that don’t have time to read every single paragraph on the website. Google has pushed this trend significantly, by showcasing video content above regular web pages when it comes to search results. Knowing this, web designers are giving the priority to video that boosts the exposure of the website and serves as an effective tool for interactions and sharing.
Encouraging diversity
This web design trend aims to justify the tripple ‘w’ that define our web space which is ‘World Wide Web’ and showcase the real connection among people around the world no matter what the differences and distances are. Long time ago, Apple did a small but significant move, by introducing emojis with different skin tones that sent a clear message that we are all in the game no matter the age, culture, gender, and social standing. Anticipations for this trend are to work on improvement of accessibility policies and to give more exposure to people worldwide in every aspect of design such as imagery, videos and copy.