They’re not design trends. They’re design patterns.
Let’s stop waging a popularity contest over design approaches and document the way we work without so much bias.
If you stick around the design industry long enough, you will see design trends rise, fall, and then return.
I’ve seen this happen numerous times during my decade-plus design career. (And it’s led me to become somewhat outspoken against design trends, but I digress.) For example, these old design trends have returned recently: gradients were all the rage until flat design but now they are returning; parallax animation was a staple in the Flash days, went away with the advent of web standards, but now has returned in JavaScript form; and do I even need to explain shadow and glow effects? Dead horse, meet my boot.
But there is a reason design trends fade and then return years later to live anew.
Design trends might wax and wane in popularity but the usefulness of the underlying technique is a constant.
The very term “design trend” obscures the reason we devour those posts about design trends. What we often call “design trends” are simply design patterns we observe being used frequently.
Obvious right? But this is an important distinction.
I’ve realized that our collective obsession with design trends is just a manifestation of our very real need for quality design patterns. (When you’ve been around long enough to talk about how long you’ve been around, like I do repeatedly even within a single article, you might just realize this too.)
So, I’m creating a library of design patterns. But I’m approaching it differently than the usual UI pattern libraries and design inspiration sites.
“Design inspiration” websites are a dime a dozen and provide little context around why the material is on display.
Many of the best UI pattern sites have shut down, and those that remain are updated infrequently.
Worse, when did design patterns become so damned boring? If you grab a design patterns book or hit one of the few remaining quality sites, you’ll see nothing but wireframes of basic components like forms and navbars.
However, design patterns encompass a lot more than basic UI components. All those visual styles we discuss in the year-end design trends posts are design patterns too. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a reference for those, instead of having to search “2017 design trends” and “2016 design trends” and so on for every year to find what you’re looking for? (Which year were button shadows popular again? Was it 2015?)
This new pattern library is a reference for new ideas to try in your design that live on independently of trendiness. Because sometimes you need new ideas to use in a design, even if they are really just old ideas.
Hey, maybe by using this new library you’ll be the person to kickstart the next design trend by bringing an old one back into awareness.
Or, dare I be so ambitious, could having a clear reference for design patterns that includes visual design reduce our reliance upon design trends? Probably not, but a designer can dream, right?
Anyway, I hope this library becomes a useful reference in the least. Check it out here:
Explore the new UI & Visual Design Pattern Library over at Proximity School
This is a brand new library, and it just launched with the first 2 patterns. I have 8 more queued, and I’ve outlined 50 more to write up. I’m planning to add one new pattern every week in 2018. To suggest a design pattern for the library or additional examples to add to the existing patterns, shoot me an email on this page.
