You wouldn’t still rock ‘80s style blue eyeliner, leg warmers, or parachute pants, so your website shouldn’t be sporting old trends either. Like fashion, website design trends are new and improving every year. If you’re not keeping up with the latest successful website designs, then your business isn’t seeing the success it could be. Whether you’re an expert graphic designer or not, the direction of your company relies on understanding basic design elements. This post will detail some of the latest trends you should consider, including brand-specific custom fonts, color transitions and gradients, and retro aesthetic.
1. Killer Graphics
Nothing is generic in 2019. You can personalize everything, so why shouldn’t your website be included? Stock photos are a thing of the past. With a smart phone in every person’s hand, quality photos and photography are not very hard to achieve. Use these kinds of authentic photos instead. In addition, one of the most successful trends is user generated content. Companies like Pura Vida and Daniel Wellington use images of customers using their products in everyday life. It doesn’t get any more authentic than that.
If you want to provide users with your own authentic approach, try hand drawn images and sketches. Rapper/singer Drake went out on a limb with his design for the album “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late,” but clearly he knew what he was doing. Since then, several businesses have used this technique – and it’s working.
2. Playful Visuals
GIF’ing is a thing now, right? A GIF is a series of images pieced together to create a quick, looping visual. The GIF frenzy makes it clear that users thirst for entertaining visuals. The best ways to use visuals in your website design is with animations and cinemagraphs.
An animation may include a GIF, which is like a short video, only with images. Animations can also be any series of moving images or a short video. Cinemagraphs are even more up and coming. A cinemagraph is first an image, but with components that move, such as water flowing in the background, or clouds rolling across the sky. Cinemagraphs are commonly found on Instagram and can give your website the authenticity it needs.
3. Experimental Navigations
The one thing that everyone uses on a website is the navigation, but sometimes the navigation can be just plain ugly. Design trends are released almost every year on how to keep the efficiency of the navigation while also making it aesthetically pleasing. 2019 trends encourage websites to be bold and experimental. Try changing everything, font, size, layout, but be sure to push the boundaries. One type of design is making the navigation the main part or focal point of the website. That way, it’s so big, you can’t miss it.
4. Brand-Specific Custom Fonts
In a world where everyone uses 12-point Times New Roman, it’s hard for a website to stand out. That’s why 2019 has brought the rise of custom fonts. Custom fonts allow brands and websites to show their true personalities, without anyone being able to copy them. This trend is also highly affordable and allows the ultimate freedom your website is looking for. Top creatives state that this trend is here to stay, so it’s best to get on board now.
5. Shattering Stereotypes
Especially around women, stereotypes are a huge part of the online world. Body image and what it means to be a woman are not only mentioned, but addressed with passion, more unapologetically than ever before. Even if your website is not specifically centered around women, it’s less about what is produced, and more about what isn’t. 2019 is the time to have an opinion and make that perspective clear through your website. At the very least, images and illustrations that shatter stereotypes will definitely keep your users coming back for more.
6. Lay It All Out in the Layout
Making a statement in 2019 goes beyond colors, visual, and fonts. The layout of a website is equally as important if you want it to stand out from the rest. Instead of your typical scroll-like layout, the standard split is taking the internet by storm. In classic art, symmetry has always been revered because it is more pleasing to the eye, but now asymmetric designs are more eye-catching. Users are not familiarized with asymmetric designs, which will make your website more memorable. Try splitting your website layout in half, with an image on one side and text on the other.
7. Color Transitions and Gradients
You may have heard that 2018 was ‘The Year of Gradients,’ but you can consider 2019 the sequel. Color transitions and gradients are here to stay. HTML5 now allows users to easily code gradients instead of manually making a graphic themselves. These trends give designs a sense of movement, life, and 3D to them. Graphic designers recommend websites to use duotone gradients as opposed to flat colors. A bright gradient against a dark scheme can give your website a slick, almost tech-like feeling.
8. Retro Aesthetic
Part of keeping up with new trends is bringing back old ones (just not the blue eyeliner). When it comes to designing your website, the purpose of this is to create some nostalgia. Colors and prints that were typically associated with the past are now being used as juxtaposition between new and old. In a way, these old trends can actually be considered new, since they come from a time when websites were not easily accessible for everyone. If you want to add some retro characteristics to your websites, try adding elements to both the design and the content, such as in color schemes and typography.
9. Simplicity
The world has been a minimalist one for quite sometime. Flatter, cleaner, and uncluttered designs have more appeal than ever, and brands everywhere are mimicking this trend. Burberry recently shocked the world with its simplistic typography, and keeping up with the trends has clearly allowed them to remain a figurehead in the market. Simple means sophisticated and easy to use, both of which your users want.
Another way to utilize simplicity in your website design is by using white space functionally – and we do mean just white space. Whereas before, white space was used as a break for the eyes, today white space can be used as the focal point of the website. White is noticeable and clean, and when your website is attractive, so will your success be.
Be retro, but modern; simple, yet bold; animate, but don’t overuse animations. With website design trends constantly fluctuating, try not to think of your website as a one-time creation. Instead your website should be a living, growing, and ever-changing entity. Some of the biggest brands have gone through complete metamorphosis over the years, and it works. In addition, technology has made it easier for even the most novice of graphic designers to excel. Your users want to know that their interests are yours too, which means your website should appeal to all the trends. In the meantime, while you’re appealing to them, they’re bringing in all the success for you.
