Web Design Trends in 2021
Web design is continuously changing and getting creative. Technologies are endless, and we are seeing that designers are parallel with technologies.
There’s a lot to look forward to in 2021. From a greater focus on inclusive design to more immersive experiences, these trends will map out the future for web design in 2021 and beyond.
We hope this list not only inspires you but makes you approach the web in a more inclusive and accessible way.
- 3D everything, 3D everywhere
- Scrolling transformations
- Collage & Mixing Mediums
- Three-dimensional colors
- Glassmorphism
- Augmented reality (AR)
Honorary mention: Web design for causes
3D everything, 3D everywhere
3D design elements have fascinated both designers and users for many years now. The popularity of this trend is going to increase in 2021 as VR and AR technologies gain momentum. It becomes a perfect idea to combine these techniques to create hyper-realistic 3D visuals taking up the whole users’ screen.
The trend allows UI and UX designers and entrepreneurs to prettify their websites. This way, they encourage potential customers to stay longer and increase the average session time. Such visuals attract users as they transcend the boundaries between the virtual space and real life.
With the advent of higher resolution screens, 3D design has come a long way from the blocky and beveled edges of Geocities. We’ve been seeing high-quality 3D visuals weaved seamlessly into web designs. Instead of being garish distractions, they’re adding to the overall user experience.
Types of 3D web designs that will become an inevitable part of web design
- Static 3D Graphics: With realistic smooth shapes and attractive colors, designers will use static 3D models while keeping all other design elements minimalist to provide the overall website design a clean, modern, and balanced look.
- Interactive 3D Effects: The healthcare and gaming industries are already benefiting a lot from interactive 3D technology. This year interactive 3D effects will see a huge utilization in various other industries for branding especially retail and merchandising, e-commerce, real estate, manufacturing, marketing and advertising, publishing, and entertainment to transform consumer experiences.
Scrolling transformations
Previously regarded as a web design faux-pas, horizontal scroll is having a comeback.
We’re seeing more web designers continuing to experiment with horizontal scroll. Those who do it best break the pattern not for the sake of being different but as a practical way to disclose secondary information progressively, like in an image gallery.
Designers employing horizontal scroll successfully in 2021 will keep in mind these considerations:
- Don’t force users to navigate through horizontal content: allow alternate ways to navigate, like arrow buttons with clear labels
- Use clear visual cues to indicate where content uses horizontal scroll, and don’t hide these cues behind hovers
- Be thoughtful about what content would benefit from being displayed in a horizontal scroll — a photo gallery is a good contender as horizontal scroll would show users a small preview, and allow them the option to view more or keep moving down the page
- Avoid requiring horizontal scroll for text that needs to be read
When users scroll, they are doing more than navigating the page: they’re interacting. The physical actions they perform in real life — flicking their fingers over the mouse — cause a response on the screen. Interaction is a form of participation, and when users are involved in things that are happening, they are more likely to be interested and engaged.
Scrolling is one of the most subtle forms of interaction, and as such, 2021’s web designers are ramping up the visual feedback users get when they scroll. This can range from full-color scheme changes to complex animated transitions to wholesale shifts in the layout. All in all, web designers are taking the time to make each scroll feel like a new page — sometimes even a new website.
However, if you want to implement this type of scroll to your website, be careful — it is not always completely UX friendly. Try to find the best way to make this trend work for you. It can be a very practical way to show secondary information, but let your users be able to find all crucial info through buttons, arrows. We certainly encourage you to try out this trend since it can make a strong impact on your user experience, but try to avoid horizontal scroll for a text that is important to read.
Collage & Mixing Mediums
Nostalgia is not new to web design. After a long reign of the flat aesthetic, we’re now in search of new and contemporary ways of adding depth to our online experiences. Websites and apps will simulate leafing through the pages of a book or magazine, creating a more material, print-like experience. The popularity of vinyl albums is proof that people want to experience something that isn’t just a bunch of zeros and ones.
Layouts that get their inspiration from print fulfill people’s desire to connect with something in the real world. Magazine style layouts and other elements of traditional graphic design provide a link to the tactile experience of print on paper.
The concept of a collage in the arts industry originates back to 1914, primarily in France — during a time where cubism, an early-20th-century art movement, was widely popular. Collage art concept frequent numerous media-types, such as newspaper, magazine, posters, yet are rare to come by in digital media.
Collage art creations have recently made their comeback through social media. A go-to format for Stories and news feed content, collages have also made their way into the field of web design. A website’s collage will most often embody a full-width visual, a precise cut-out of an image (usually a photograph) — all integrated with a mix of solid color graphics and patterned illustrations.
Integrating mixed media and collage into your website design is a surefire way to add a splash of creativity to an otherwise ordinary experience and make your brand or business stand out.
Three-dimensional colors
Color schemes in web design have been trending towards gradients for a while now, and this year’s trend feels like the next evolution, with color transitions becoming more lifelike than ever. Taking their cue from Apple’s Big Sur OS, we expect colors that are saturated and three-dimensional, almost like fruit you can pluck right out of the screen.
This trend is accomplished through fine shading that gives a rounded feel to the flat icons of yesteryear. While we do anticipate it to appear most commonly on app icons, web designers are also abandoning the neat transitions of gradients for background blended colors that come across as more imperfect and natural. Two colors side by side might abruptly smear together or they may retain the shadows and depth of painted objects. All in all, this trend suggests that the web design colors of 2021 are aspiring to higher realms of realism.
Glassmorphism
If you like to keep your fingers on the pulse of the latest web design trends, you’ve probably already heard of Glassmorphism. Eye-catching and colorful, this trend favors transparency and multi-layered approaches. Designed to resemble milky glass surfaces, it has caught a lot of attention.
Glassmorphism is a term used to describe UI design that emphasizes light or dark objects, placed on top of colorful backgrounds. A background-blur is placed on the objects which allows the background to shine through — giving it the impression of frosted glass.
Commonly being utilized in web and app design, it’s quickly becoming mainstream. But it isn’t necessarily a brand new idea.
The style is heavily influenced by similar concepts that have been first introduced by Apple in 2013 with iOS 7. It re-emerged when Apple brought back the effect with its latest update, MAC OS Big Sur in November 2020. It has since been used in Windows Vista and Microsoft as part of their Fluent design system.
Elements of Glassmorphism Aesthetic
- Multi-layered approach: with objects floating in space, the layered interface maintains a clean look that’s easy on the eyes.
- Transparency: setting a light transparent background for the element is important.
- Blur background: giving a frosted glass feel by increasing the blur effect, giving it more depth.
- Vivid colors: the background color plays an essential role in order to highlight the blurred transparency it should be colorful but subtle.
- Subtle, light border: a small border of 1px or 2px is added to the element to give it a clean glass edge detail.
How you use this design principle to the advantage of the usability of your app is going to be the most important aspect. Glassmorphism is the natural outcome of the design evolution. Obviously, this will give birth to new twists and experiments in the years to come.
Augmented reality (AR)
The term “augmented reality” has been around since the early 90s, when it was being used to facilitate navigation for airline pilots. Today, with the advent of games and gadgets like Pokémon Go it is rapidly gaining prominence and is moving into the arena of web design.
With less potential for error than with wearable technology, AR is already starting to improve user experience on desktop and mobile. E-commerce web designers have been implementing AR in recent years, making use of webcams or smartphone cameras to help consumers choose their products.
In fashion retail, for example, AR is used as a “virtual dressing room” experience. Users can point their desktop or smartphone camera towards themselves and scroll through outfit choices that are displayed on the screen. This is particularly prominent in web design for AR as we move from static websites, in which information does not change, to dynamic websites, where information changes constantly. One of the benefits of AR is that it offers a completely 360 experience that desktop computers simply cannot match.
As such, this provides designers with more opportunity to interact with their users, adding key points of information at all angles in what’s known as the “Z-axis”. Rather than having multiple tabs open in one two-dimensional screen, users can access information all around them in an organized fashion, much like a chemist’s laboratory with every key ingredient within easy reach. AR helps to eliminate the new kinds of tactile interactions to which we have become so accustomed to using smartphones. Rather than scrolling and zooming, AR is using automation intuitively, while helping users restore their human interactions by allowing them to “touch” virtual objects.
Honorary: Web design for causes
Web design has long been focused on delivering great user experiences. And in 2021, the best user experience will stem from shared values and joint causes.
Designer George Aye writes about the importance of acknowledging the role of power when designing for complex social sector issues, as one may do for social design projects. Depending on the project, designing for user engagement in a project can be more important than designing for solutions, and it encourages the use of human-centered design methodologies.
Engineer Chris Cox of Facebook used the term “social design” in 2010 and 2011 as, “[social design] defines the concept as improving how people build human-to-human, versus human-to-interface, connections online”.
With the COVID-19 pandemic and the various shelter-in-place orders that followed, the internet has become a refuge. Not only have virtual conferences become the norm for social gatherings and entertainment, but many brick-and-mortar brands have also turned to websites to keep their businesses afloat. And web designers were up to the task, creating meaningful and impactful designs. In 2021, we’ll see more designs and imagery resonating with a movement or social & environmental issues. I’ve seen more and more brands rallying around issues and connecting with their users on a deeper level.
Social Oriented Design (S.O.D) is an exploration of how design skills can go beyond commercial goals to create a social impact on the public.
Historically, social design has been mindful of the designer’s role and responsibility in society, and of the use of the design process to bring about social change. Social design is a critical discipline that challenges the pure market-orientedness of conventional design practice and attempts to see past this into a more inclusive conception of design. Often this means social design will prioritize user groups and people who are marginalized.
Depending on the project, designing for user engagement in a project can be more important than designing for solutions, and it encourages the use of human-centered design methodologies.
In 2021, predicts Editor X, design will keep serving as a tool to educate, empower and raise awareness on these matters.
“The need to convey a powerful, radical message with the hope to effect change will lead designers to create bespoke design assets, such as custom-made typefaces, illustrations, and icon sets,” reads the Editor X report.
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If these first few days of 2021 are any indicator, it’s clear that this year will continue to be full of unprecedented events. Without a magic ball, it’s difficult to predict what web design trends will best suit, but ultimately creativity and being user-centric at its core is the key to all good website design.
