Web design trends should not be seen as inhibitors of creativity. In fact, a website designer can really play around with the latest tendencies in graphics, layout style, fonts, and media elements to keep the creative spark alive while delivering engaging, attractive websites for themselves or their clients.
We have gathered a list of the most notable trends in website design for 2020 and beyond. While many of these directions were explored before, now they align to a general direction towards a simple way of navigating, providing a highly visual user experience, and creating websites that entice the audience to explore more, view more content, and connect to the brand.
1. Bold Typography
Are you wondering how you can make a text readable while getting the message across in an impactful way? Even though fewer and fewer websites display big blocks of text on their landing pages, it doesn’t mean that content has lost its importance. Honouring that content and delivering it in a highly engaging way can be achieved by using massive, bold fonts in all caps.
Bold typography will draw the eye to the text while being a graphic element in itself. Often, website designers create custom fonts for a website, aligning its look to the general feel and personality of the brand.
2. Dark Mode
Dark Mode is used frequently by mobile users during their evening browsing, or when the light of their environment is dim. Dark mode – light elements on a muted, dark background – has practical benefits, most of all. It reduces eye strain, improving visual ergonomics, and saves battery life on mobile devices.
Today, a vast selection of apps and websites have a dark mode option for their users, and websites have aligned to this tendency. Dark themes are not only practical in terms of battery life and comfortable browsing, but they also look ultra-modern and allow web designers to introduce popping, bright designs that contrast to the background.
3. Futuristic Color Palettes
Colour palettes inspired by futuristic design go hand in hand with dark themes. Neon, glowing shades of cool colours like purple, blue, hot pink, and turquoise really stand out against a dark background. Combined with other web design trends, like isometric designs, glow-in-the-dark lettering, and highly saturated, contrasting colour schemes really shine.
4. Split Screen
A great solution that seems to work like a charm for mobile websites is using a split screen to deliver two separate messages at the same time. Having two main categories of products, or maybe pairing a piece of text content with a relevant visual can be done by separating the areas of interest and giving each its own space. This will make both elements eye-catching and help them compete with the same chances to grab the attention of the visitor.
5. Black & White
One way of creating an elegant, minimalist design is to use a greyscale as your main design. The secret of making this type of design attractive and special is to use high-quality media and to limit the shades of grey in your theme. Another great trend is using an intensive, bright colour and injecting it in the black and white design.
Contrast is, again, a great method of shifting the viewer’s attention towards a focal point, but soft shades and ethereal graphics can work sublimely with the right brand.
6. Handmade Illustrations
Hand-drawn illustrations are used by websites to invoke high craftsmanship, special qualities, uniqueness, personality, and a personal tone used by a brand. Purposely made to be “imperfect”, with open, organic shapes, overline colouring, and different textures, hand-drawn flat illustrations are used for a wide range of web design elements, from icons to the main graphic on the home page.
7. Bright Colors
Easy to integrate into any of the previously presented designs, vibrant colours are one of the major web design trends for 2020. You can make them the center of the colour scheme, as bright, vibrant colours do a great job at drawing attention, serving as a good background for that bold typography, and allowing minimalism to be itself without getting dull.
Think yellow, turquoise, hot pink, or pastels that are nice to look at, but also have some kind of connection to your brand.
8. 3D Illustrations and Isometric Design
Because of the user’s desire to watch interactive, highly informative, yet exciting content, video content and 3D illustrations are a big trend right now. Flat, 2D images are just plain boring.
3D illustrations can be seen on numerous websites today, rewarding the visitor with an eye-catching visual they can observe in detail and gives them the sensation that it’s popping out of the screen.
Another notable trend is the isometric design. You have surely seen this before. It’s a mix between 2D and 3D illustrations. They offer a 3D perspective on a landscape, object, logo, and so on, but the perspective lines do not converge. Instead, they stay parallel, allowing you to have a better view of the illustrated thing.
We’ve been through different types of illustrations that add a little something to the type of visuals we were used to. One more notable example is the animated illustration, often hand-drawn. Moving illustrations have subtle, repeated animations that immediately draw your attention to that area. Your brain is actually programmed to check out movement, so don’t miss this opportunity to attract your viewers’ attention.
9. Extreme Minimalism
One of the staple trends in web design is the ultra-minimalist approach. Lately, more and more websites have chosen extremely simple navigation over standard website structures, inviting their visitors in a sort of a journey through their pages. Usually, the main landing page has a powerful visual element and very little text, guiding the visitor towards different extensions of the website.
Huge photos and videos are fit for this type of theme, but you will have to make sure that the quality and speed of your website will not be compromised by the big files.
10. Geometric Elements
Mixed graphic elements are not the newest trend in our list, but it’s still just as strong as before. The popularity of mixed imagery – illustration and photography is definitely influenced by the way we have come to alter our pictures and add several layers of emojis, drawing, and effects.
Mixing up geometric elements on your website is one of the safest and easiest ways to align with the newest web design trends, as long as you do it in a subtle way that actually represents your brand’s personality. As small and random a geometric element might be, it might seem out of place and strange if it’s not chosen to match the tone and theme of your message.
For example, for a brand with a playful or personal personality, hand-drawn elements overlayed on photographs will add a familiar and endearing voice to its messages.
11. Gradients and Duotone
Duotone effects and gradients are another trend in web design that can already be seen on major websites like Spotify. You can use them in your hero sections to add dimension, layering, and bright colours to your graphic layout, separating different areas of interest and maintaining a unity of the design.
Duotone is an effect that replaces the black and white shades of a photograph with a different colour, or even more than one colour, in order to achieve brand unity.
12. Floating Elements and Shadowing
Are you wondering how to integrate so many ideas of the list on your website? One of the website design trends is to arrange graphic elements against a negative space or a white frame, attracting the user’s attention with floating elements and soft shadowing.
You should aim for the 3D effect which emphasises what you add on your page by making it look real, palpable.
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