In 2014, web design was all about trends like HTML5, responsive design, micro UX and flat user interface (UI). When it comes to aesthetics, web design was undeniably ruled by the king of all design principles – minimalism. What’s in store for web designers in 2015? Here’s a list of top web design trends we’ll see blossom during this year.
Typography
- Web design trends to watch for in 2015
This is something practically all industry experts agree upon – 2015 will be the year of typography. Unique fonts will be used as an integral part of every design, reflecting the brand’s message and providing a unique experience.
Additionally, typography will be used to maintain brand consistency across both virtual and material marketing campaigns. Already today the market of typography offers great fonts at reasonable prices, prompting brands to think twice before they settle for Times or Arial.
Captivating backgrounds
Web designers will continue to use large, high-quality graphics – both photos and videos – as website backgrounds. This strategy works great for mobile environments, so we’ll surely see it grow in the upcoming years. Background videos are predicted to gain steam this year and such dynamic backgrounds will serve a focal point in the whole design – have a look at Airbnb’s website to get the idea.
Everyone will scroll
Scrolling will become even more important in 2015 due to the rapid growth of mobile device usage across the globe. Scrolling is great for UX – it’s intuitive and provides a more engaging and interactive kind of experience on a website. Most importantly, scrolling is vital to a website’s load time and by now we all know that every additional second of waiting for a website to load can have disastrous consequences.
Flat design
Say goodbye to elements like patterns, gradients, shadows or bubbles – there comes the intuitive and elegant flat design. And it’s going to stay here for good. Flat design is minimalistic, provides an intelligible layout and works great for mobile.
It’s possible that flat design will develop in new ways – think Google’s take on it, called “material design”, which is based on visual metaphors, meaningful motion and bold graphics. Whatever be the future of flat design, we’ll surely see more of it in 2015.
Card design
Card design thrives on the rapid growth of Pinterest. In 2015, it will become an even more important web design trend. Some claim that card design will in fact serve a standard practice for organizing information on a website’s space, offering an uncluttered and functional layout. Cards can prompt users to like, share, pin or purchase products – the design will play an important role in strategies developed by brands to engage with consumers.
Personalization of UX
When used right, relevant content can be a very powerful web design feature. In 2015, brands will strive to create a sense of familiarity and devise various methods for providing relevant content to their users.
‘Recently read/visited’ will be used more frequently, rendering websites more familiar and relevant. Brands will use web analytics to improve their understanding of user behavior on their websites and come up with new ways for providing engaging content.
Interactive storytelling
Storytelling – the process of creating brand narratives that help to situate them in specific contexts of principles or values – is predicted to become even more important in 2015. Literally every element of a web design will serve as a medium for communicating the brand narrative. The layout, buttons, backgrounds, videos and typography will all tell a single captivating story.
Judging by these trends, 2015 will be the year when more web designers than ever will be coming forward and proposing new solutions aimed at improving user experience and fostering consumer engagement with brands online.
Tess Pajaron is a Community Manager at Open Colleges, an online learning provider based in Sydney, Australia. She has a background in Business Administration and Management.
