Modern Web Design Trends
In this article, we’ll look at some of the most popular web design trends emerging now. Amongst these examples we can see how designers are pushing the limits of human interaction and changing our understanding of what a modern web site can be.
The Big Screen
A new trend that is appearing is to create a design consisting of a few words overlaid on a large image or video. The navigation may be entirely removed, or hidden as a small icon in a portion of the screen.
There are two styles of this trend, one that is more cinematic in it’s approach inspired by movies, the other based on books and magazine covers.
This technique is both visually appealing and practical allowing the design to work responsively across a range of devices including desktops and mobile phones.
Cards
Cards are a design framework for organising large amounts of content on an equal plane. Each card may represent a single action, task or piece of information. The card might itself might consist of multiple elements (eg. headline, text, images etc) however the card itself focuses one just one action or outcome.
Made popular by sites like Pinterest, card based design has become an ideal solution due to it’s compatibility with responsive frameworks. The rectangular shape and digesting of information into small self contained chunks compliments the mobile viewing experience perfectly.
Card design bridges a much needed gap between mobile and desktop devices, providing consistent experience in interaction and usability regardless of the device.
Flat Design
Although not a recent design trend, flat design is now appearing to mature as a design standard. Whilst not appropriate for all types of web development flat design is likely to remain a permanent staple for interface design, particularly for smaller elements such as icons, menus and illustrations.
Flat design creates a visually cleaner, less cluttered look to web design and creates design elements more easily scalable and manageable thanks to SVG graphics and icon font technology.
It’s important to remember flat design doesn’t always have to be flat, the underlying principles behind the design process are always changing. Designers now incorporate subtle gradients, textures and photos to achieve more interesting effects.
