Avoid Reading About Web Design Trends. Maybe.

Photo @edhoradic via unsplash.com

A post on Medium recently was about "Why You Should Avoid Graphic Design Trends." The same might be said about web design trends. There certainly is no lack of articles and videos with predictions about the current or the next hot design trends. I would say that predicting is a losing game 90% of the time. Noticing trends is more effective.

For example, one trend of the past few years that I noticed - very long scrolling pages - seems to be falling out of favor. I never liked this trend of a website on a page but it gained ground due to be it being pushed via templates in places like Wix and Squarespace. I suppose mobile also had something to do with its rise in use because scrolling on those devices down, down, down seems very natural.

Digital illustrations, Vibrant Colors, Geometric Patterns, Gradients and Duotones, and Bold Typography are all topics that I and others have been teaching to design students for decades. Nothing new here, in fact, some of those ideas are bringing back earlier trends. And that's not unusual in the style world. Think about how fashion design continually brings back past trends in a revival/update way.

I did see that Split Screen was listed there and in a few other places as a trend and that I would say that is new, though I haven't seen it used much yet.

An article I saw just a few months ago seems already either out of date or predictably wrong.

One trend there is "dark mode" which has become an option on mobile screens because people feel that the blue light on the screen interferes with your ability to fall asleep. I have seen conflicting research on that belief - and I never liked web pages that were dark with light text as a reader. It might be fine for pages of images or pages with minimal text.

Others noted:

• Imperfections that add personality.- sounds like an excuse
• Immersive 3D elements - often cause problems
• Soft shadows, layers and floating elements - can look very nice
• Mixing photography with graphics - hasn't that always been an option that was used.
• Solid frames of white space - Ah, the perpetual white space design controversy continues
• Glowing, luminous color schemes.- Ugh
• Ultra minimalist navigation - simple is better - unless it involves lots of dropdowns and things that can only be found with a search

I will admit that I do look at sites, like Adobe's trends, but I follow very few trends myself. I also like to look back at trends that were listed the previous year to see if predictions were accurate and if anything thrown at screen stuck.

You might say that the broken grid and asymmetrical layouts have held on to a degree, as an example.

broken grid and asymmetrical layout