The world of web design is changing fast and the change is driven by new technological advances in hardware, new aesthetics and new applications. Web design industry, like other creative fields, goes through phases, and these phases are defined by trends. Designers always look for more effective and efficient ways of presenting content to users.
The most significant trend which has been reinforcing its status during the last few years is responsive web design. As we have more laptops, smart phones and tablets around us, the web design should simply support all. A responsive page should look equally good on all those platforms. The idea of responsive design isn’t just limited to full websites scaling down smaller. It has become the opposite; start with mobile and build your way up. Whereas some of these mediums maybe limiting, there have been advances like Retina screen which enables the use of very sharp high resolution images. Similarly, big oversized photography in the background is anexcellent way to capture the visitor’s attention and it looks great when done properly.Website layouts can be attuned for a very specific feeling or emotion based on the colors and background style. Large photographs are one other method to push for a very specific emotion. The new CSS3 properties also have allowed for opacity edits on any webpage element without using photoshop.
Some social media websites have begun applying infinite scroll effects onto dashboards, timelines and user feeds. Recently Pinterest has also adopted this infinite page scroll on their homepage. It provides a seamless interface without reloading the page. The downside is that the users have difficulty in generating permalinks for the different pages. This trend seems to work best when you can load information that doesn’t require a specific pagination style. If the content is dynamic and constantly changing, infinite scroll might be a suitable option.
Sliding image presentations and demo videos are very common especially with new products and concepts. Landing pages are usually kept simple and minimalistic so instead of filling the page with information, visitors are taken toa guided tour of the features.The terms minimalism and whitespace will be heard more often in 2013. It is true that these trends have been part of web design for years, it’s also true they have been evolving; it is not the same minimalism as it was 10 years ago. There are many websites using whitespace as a design tool which does not distract users with lots of text and images and lets them to focus deeper on the main content.
This year we may witness some new schemas and mindsets related to web design. The community has grown into a global community of designers all over the planet. It is likely impossible to nail down every single new idea as it spreads over the community very rapidly. The best way to be involved with the change is to be proactive with new trends by reading new blog posts and tutorials to stay updated with the latest web standards.
Written by: John Brandenburg