Web design trends continue to change around the world. As the world continues to change, so do the requirements clients have in what they want and expect in modern web design. Today we’re doing a brief review of the 6 web design trends we anticipate in 2014. With clients throughout the greater DFW area, including Plano, we’re seeing the evolution of these web design trends make their way into numerous new projects.
- Content First
- Simplicity of Design
- The combination of desktop and mobile design into a single version
- Responsive Techniques
- Flat Colors
- Technology Agnostic
Content First – Content is the most talked-about term in modern web design. In the coming months we’ll see deep debate about how content should be presented to the user and whether or not we should adapt it to a particular device. In effect, we need to create efficient, searchable, accessible, multi-platform content and make sure it reaches the user via the best interactive experience possible.
Simplicity of Design – Simplicity is the new paradigm. The process of simplification will be the only tool we have to make content accessible and readable on the greatest possible number of devices, with the best user experience. Content strategy, usability, accessibility and visual design must all be guided by this new paradigm.
Combination of Desktop and Mobile Design – Responsive, adaptive content, mobile first, device agnostic, resolution Independent; all these terms are evolving towards a common destination which is the unification of desktop and mobile into a single version. But the big question is how to integrate apps and experiences through multiple devices? Our experts foresee an evolution in responsive. The trend until now has been to adapt content, but many voices now argue for unification.
Responsive Techniques – the search for multi-platform versions and cross-platform technologies will lead to responsive techniques such as SVG, web fonts, design with typography and icon fonts evolving and becoming more widespread. On a visual level we’ll see trends like the ones coming up in the next discussion of “flat colors”.
Flat Colors – the main visual trends are simplicity, minimalism, clear layouts, app-style interfaces, design focusing on typography, less decoration, flat style and flat colors. This exact trend towards simplification in design and seemingly aesthetic matters, such as flat colors, responds to the need to create adaptive projects and serve images and scalable elements to retina displays with excellent performance on 3G connections, but also to mobile devices with inferior provisions from the non-western market and to devices such as eReaders.
Technology Agnostic – in web standards based applications, looking at the data graphic below we can see that the HTML/ CSS/ Javascript trio is the “primordial soup”. We then have lots of CSS in its various forms, custom filters, CSS Effects, 3D Transforms, Preprocessors and technologies such SVG or web fonts related to responsive techniques.
In server-side languages Ruby and Python and experimentation with Node.js are becoming more widespread. The multiplicity of frameworks and builders will be another constant.
Working with clients in and around Plano, web design has taught us a lot about emerging trends and developments. If you have anything you’d like to add to our list, feel free to leave your comments here!