The start of a new year is always an exciting time for businesses to look ahead and wonder what the coming year will bring. There are a lot of changes in store in 2014, especially for people who work in technology and web design.
2013 saw a slew of new trends, some of which have begun to fade out and others that stuck around and are still going strong. While 2014 is just getting started, let’s take a look at some of the web design trends that have started to emerge or that we can expect to see in the coming year.
Flat Design
Flat Design was one of the biggest trends to emerge in 2013 and it is going strong into the new year. Companies from Taco Bell to Apple are dropping skeumorphism in favor of flat design by stripping their graphics of pretty much any design element that isn’t 100% purposeful in the function of the product. Apple, for example, launched their iOS7 with an extreme flat design, stripping the design elements until they were stark naked. This involves getting rid of 3-D graphics and gradients and basically just using flat shapes and indicators to help the user have a more accessible experience.
Experimental typography
More and more designers are having fun with fonts and injecting them with new personalities. These fonts have a little more pizazz than standard serif or san-serif fonts like Times New Roman, Helvetica, etc. We’ve already seen designers beginning to add uniqueness and personality to the fonts their using in logos and on websites. Some of these can be fun and playful while others are artistic but still professional. You can expect to see many more websites going the way of the less boring font in 2014.
Slide Out Menus
Want to view the content on a website crisply without distraction? Slide out menus allow you to do just that. A slide out menu can be toggled from the top or side of your screen to reveal the rest of the site’s content in a seamless way that doesn’t interrupt your browsing experience. It’s a nice way to get where you’re going without getting distracted. It’s minimalistic and simplicity 2.0.
Big Background Videos
Move over single page websites that feature big beautiful images, and hello background videos. This new trend is making waves, and it isn’t hard to see why! Imagine a beautiful video playing on your site that fills up the entire screen, providing your audience with an inside look and peak into your company or business. When done right big background videos can make your website stand out from others, and provide an in-depth user experience were customers and readers feel connected to you and your brand in a way never before possible.
Endless Scrolling
Scrolling through a website is faster and easier than having to click through links to access various information. They are not the content-cluttered long scrolling pages of the past, either. New design techniques allow the content to be impeccably organized and formatted in a way that’s super easy to read and digest. Long scrolling site can change layout and design as you’re scrolling, which makes it easy to forget that you’re actually scrolling through quite a bit of information.
Simple Color Schemes
2014 will see a lot more websites using only one or two colors instead of the eye-popping graphics and animation of the past. A new trend is to use one bright and clean background color, like red, orange or teal, and to include images or black or white text over it. The effect is super minimalist and user-friendly.
Focus on Mobile
Responsive Web Design was another big trend in 2013 and now 2014 is seeing websites designed expressly for mobile use. Designers are working more and more on keeping sites functioning on mobile devices and developers are helping the cause along too. Things like logins, social media integration, email subscriptions, endless scrolling and many other features are making sites much, much easier to use on phones, which is where most users are turning these days.
Less Text, More Video
Instead of having blurbs about what a company does, businesses are instead opting for short videos. Because videos are easy to produce and share on your site and on social media and they also appeal to the modern attention span that wants to be wowed and entertained, videos are a great way to communicate with an audience effectively.
Scroll Activated Animations
Interactivity in web design is starting to go to an entirely new level. With scroll activated animations you can create incredible content that your audience can interact with and explore. It makes your web content truly come to life in a way never before possible. Sometime the web can feel distant and different than a person connection, but with scroll activated animations your audience can start to feel more in touch with the digital world.