New Year, New Trends: part one

Looking into the future, here is a list of upcoming web trends to keep an eye on as you work on your latest projects. (They are called trends and not fads, as trends tend to stick around for a few years while fads are only hot for a very short time.)

1. Fonts with Personality

Designers experimenting with a variety of types of fonts not only in logos and graphics, but on websites.  Using fonts that aren’t your standard serif or san-serif can help support the feeling or story of your site to your audience.

2. Flat Design

We saw it with the new Windows 8 and Apple iOS7, now it is coming to websites.  Less drop shadows, more squared edges and less use of glassy effects are already popping up on popular sites across industries.

3. Large Images Replacing Sliders (“Large Hero Areas”)

A good example of this is: https://squareup.com/ and http://realtii.com/

While very attention grabbing, this new trend hasn’t had enough time to prove they work better than sliders.  Time will tell.  But it sure is clean and striking!

4. Mobile Mobile Mobile

2014 will usher in the requirement of design with mobile in mind instead of it being a wishlist item.  With the amount of handheld devices on the rise and desktops declining, you need to make sure your site works well everywhere (aka Responsive Web Design).

5. Simplified Content

Content remains king, but less is truly becoming more thanks to social media.  Short blocks of content, (think Twitter’s 140 characters), is meeting the needs of our shorter attention spans.  Designers are meeting this need with shorter bursts of content versus long narratives on sites.  In the end, it is easier and faster to read for users who like to scan the page (and read on mobile devices).

What trends do you see coming in 2014?  What are your favorites?  What do wish would end?

Feel free to contact us to brainstorm ways to freshen up  your site – call 773-665-2552