New ideas, concepts, and developments stay for a particular while, and then they go away with time. This is how trends work in entertainment, sports, politics, and even the design industry, especially web design.
The thing about web design trends that they are always changing no matter what, and that’s how it is with people who possess a creative mindset. These are the kind of people who are still willing to go out of their comfort zone to try something new so they can further hone their skills and appeal to their niche audience.
While having a beautiful design is one crucial aspect, accessibility, functionality, and psychological safety are also just as important factors to consider in web design. While we can expect a series of new designs to look forward to, there are also some familiar ones like the ongoing minimalist and colorful flat illustrations.
If you’re uncertain about where you want to take your design skills in 2020, worry not as we have searched hither and thither across the web to whip up this elaborate list of some of the hottest web design trends that you can look forward to this year:
Web Design Trends
1. Gradients
Ultra minimalist design has been buzzing around for a couple of years now. It’s cool that designers kept themselves from putting in adding too many visual properties and focusing only on key content and functional elements.
However, this led to designs that focused on too much white space and virtually zero colors. In other words, it just made the interfaces look all too similar, which lacked character and distinction.
That’s why designers got creative again and started to experiment with several visual styles. One of those styles turned out to be gradients. Sometime in 2018 and 2019, gradients began to garner notice slowly and even started to replace flat colors.
This design choice brought more personality in layouts, which invited interest in the eyes of consumers. Product teams and stakeholders soon realize that they could use gradients for branding colors.
Gradients can be incredibly versatile in that they can be used as color filters over illustrations are images, content background, or as an accent for functional features like call-to-action buttons.
2. Text-Only Heroes
Hero areas are that part of the website when your first load the website – in other words, the “above the fold” area. In 2019, various hero-area experimentation was being conducted in 2019. It turns out that one of the trends resulting from that experimentation was text-only heroes.
While hero areas are usually known for their text-on-image approach, it has evolved to include a variety of other elements. The “text-only” tactic has been intriguing because instead of using a background image, it just lets typography do all the work.
It focuses largely on typography, with the only unique feature being the color-altering background whenever someone visits the website. It uses the ever-present minimalist design approach and offers more personality than just the classic, albeit overused sans-serif font.
3. Dark Mode
Who doesn’t want something with a little boldness and drama in their life? Dark mode became increasingly widespread in 2019 after being introduced by Google and most of its apps, such as Chrome and YouTube.
More interestingly, dark mode isn’t showing any signs of slowing down and will look to spread throughout 2020. This design trend doesn’t only look ultra-modern, but it’s much easier on the eyes and the design, and the colors really pop.
Dark themes have been practical as well, especially for OLED screens as it helps safe power and extend screen life spans, while also making it look aesthetically pleasing. Dark backgrounds help make accent colors more visible, bringing in a truly dynamic effect.
However, dark moles don’t work with every other website, so we advise you to think logically and practically instead of just appealing to current trends. YouTube makes it work.
4. Split Screen Content
If you have more than one idea to show to your target audience, but still want your website’s layout to look organized, then try splitting the page into two right from the middle. But when you do this, be sure that each of those sides helps distribute the message that you’re trying to convey.
And to make it more interesting, you can make each screen behaved a bit differently. For instance, you can ask some asymmetry by fiddling around with squirrel effects and have each side move at different pieces.
You can even bring some visual hierarchy into this design by adding an extra element at the center of the screen, especially where the two halves coincide. For that, you can either include a menu header, a call-to-action button, or even your local to serve as a focal point that balances the screen out.
5. Abstract Illustrations
Custom illustrations, only when done right, are a lock-in making any brand stand out. A genuine illustration can bring out that unique flavor in a product or service. Competitors might piggyback on your typography or color scheme, but never your illustration style.
Digital illustrations have been making their presence known all throughout 2019. Some big companies have been making good use of this including:
- Shopify
- MailChimp
However, there have hardly been any illustrations that are particularly attractive or motivating enough to entice consumers. Seeing as how there are so many styles around, it can be tough for users to settle for one that excellently transmits the goals and objectives of a certain company.
That’s why, to make illustrations deliver more of a punch, designers have recently embraced an abstract style to illustrations, and this is one of the styles that have been touted to dominate 2020.
Unfortunately, there’s also a risk that comes with using the style and that is the inability of the audience to interpret the message through an illustration.
Therefore it is vital to ensure that your illustrations aren’t too abstract to the point where they don’t serve any business value. More and more designers are turning to Figma resources as a way to keep up with design trends, whilst not designing 100% unique files every time.
