10 Current Pivotal Web Design Trends
1. Flat UI will continue to grow
Clean currently beats fancy, those who are fans of sans serif font can rejoice.
Windows 8 was really influential here and then Apple followed ditching skeuomorphism when it launched iOS7.
Windows 8
Apple iOS7
2. Mobile first
Smartphone and tablet usage is now overtaking desktop traffic for many websites. These devices will only continue to dominate, forcing designers to think carefully about the user experience for smaller screens while still thinking about bigger ones too.
Adapting to a growing mobile-enabled user base can make a company more agile and drive innovation within organisations.
And for those who still have a ‘mobile second’ approach ensuring that responsive and or adaptive design is embraced.
3. Scrolling
Parallax scrolling, horizontal scrolling, column-based scrolling and infinite scrolling.
This trend has grown lately, partly because scrolling is easy enough to execute, and partly because designers are keeping mobile and tablet designs at the forefront of their mind, which means it’s all about swiping.
4. Micro UX
Microscopic attention to detail can really make a website stand out from the crowd. Used sparingly, micro UX effects can help bring a website to life, with menus, transitions and hover states all pleasing the senses.
For example, check out this lovely progress indicator from the Daily Beast.
5. Less text
The web is seeming to become a lot less text heavy, with some websites and apps having almost no visible text, instead relying on images and icons to convey information to the user.
This is not always a good idea though and if you find yourself using under 10 words but then having to create a video for the user to make sense of things, then it’s probably not working.
This Danish agency, ELI, however is a great example of minimal text with the user having no trouble working out what it is or how to use it.
6. Minimalist navigation
Icons, rolldowns, and navigation that shrinks as you start to scroll down the page.
Stripped-down navigation is a trend that looks set to grow in popularity partly influenced by the need to design condensed navigation for mobile.
7. CSS replaces images
Why use an image as an icon when you can use CSS? Who wouldn't want a set of lovely CSS checkboxes on their website?
8. Video / moving backgrounds
Websites don’t need to be static and with the rise of HTML 5 it’s become easier to add things like animation to create a richer user experience.
Spotify captures this brilliantly.
9. Varied typography
Web fonts are on the rise, and designers are favouring bigger font sizes than ever, so mix and match is proving to be very popular.
10. Making the most of one page
Lightboxes, overlays, and expanding and repositioned tiles.
More sites are seeking to avoid loading new pages, preferring instead to present additional content on the current page thus reducing the amount of clicks in an average user journey.
