30/06/2014
Everyone wants to remain competitive and relevant to their target audience. This is why it’s so important to stay up to date with current trends in your business. Web developers and designers are no different; actually they especially need to track latest trends because their industry evolves so rapidly. Potential clients may not know that their site can look out of date just months after its been built.
Fortunately at this time we can already look at what we will be seeing in the beginning of the next year. Like fashion and technology, the styles of websites and blogs you see would also evolve and change. Below you will find a list of expected web design trends in approaching 2014.
01. FLAT WEB DESIGN
It seems it is going to be yet another year of Flat Design and making stuff simpler and cleaner. This trend focuses on typography and the use of color, avoiding at the same time the unnecessary frills, textures and styles, effects like shadows, glows and so on. This type of design tries to concentrate the user experience on content by making website easier to understand. In other words, Flat Design enhances the 2D screen at the expense of methods that try to make websites look more three-dimensional.
Examples:
http://pragmaticlab.com/
http://www.coletownsend.com/
http://oak.is/
http://www.stilld.nl/
http://www.caramelbudgie.com/
02. PARALLAX SCROLLING
Scrolling effects rules in web design. Whether it is something simple like header that changes its size after scroll or more fancy like horizontal scrolling content or parallax – scrolling is worth to consider while planning any website design. Probably the most impressive is the so-called Parallax Scrolling. It allows designers to control the depth of objects on their websites by controling the scroll speed of different elements like images, headlines and others. It may be cosmetic or the core of any design.
Examples:
http://www.noiretrenoir.com/
http://wagerfield.github.io/parallax/
http://aform.lu/index.php?id=3
http://kitkat.com/ #/hardware
http://speed-motion.com.ua/
03. CLEAN AND SIMPLE
One step further after Flat Design in making things simpler is minimalism. We will see design continue to be simplified with single page websites, flat design, fixed headers and minimalism overall. First of all it is related to content focus philosophy and second of all – it is mobile friendly. Designs like those are elegant, clean, fast and easy to read.
Examples:
http://minimalmonkey.com/
http://www.justsmith.com/
http://jordiensenyatdisseny.com/
http://minnixio.com/
http://wootten.ca/
04. WEB THAT RUN LIKE APP
The popularization of mobile devices has its own impact on web design trends. Responsive design and “mobile first” approach resulted in sites that can be used like an application. Probably the most popular example is Google Docs. With the simplicity and ease of use, we are likely to see more and more blogs in this format. On the other hand, this trend reveals itself in website navigation that uses mobile patterns – slide out menus in dashboard for example. Big advantage of this trend is that you can visit such websites on any device you use.
Examples:
The whole bunch of Google products led by the https://docs.google.com/ and https://plus.google.com/. Also Wordpress dashboard and so on.
05. ANIMATIONS
With still growing capabilities of HTML5, CSS3 and the addition of pre-processors (SASS, LESS) and jQuery of course, we surely will see enhance of more and more astonishing animations. Used smart they can be this “wow” factor, that will make your website stand out. Additionally animations are easy to use (lots of open source “copy-paste” plugins out there) and increasingly mobile firendly.
Examples:
https://layervault.com/
http://symbolset.com/
http://adamrudzki.com/
http://gospecless.com/
http://www.madebyblock.com/
This short list certainly does not close the topic and there is a lot more trends to consider. Still, it is a decent list and it’s worth getting to know with it! Just remember, trends come and go. They change sometimes completely unexpectedly. You don’t have to go out and apply them all to your current web design straight after reading this article. Try to understand them and take only from those parts that will serve your goals and ideas.
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Please let me know, if you have any clarifications,
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Thanks & Regards,
Saravanan P,
GatedON Technologies,
No : 162/51, Periyar pathai,
Choolaimedu,Chennai 600 094.
IND: +91 44 4385 2139.
USA: +1 209 690 3043.
Email: [email protected].
Website: http://www.GatedON.com.
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