Web Design Trends Of 2015
Every year, Web design grows and so many awesome things are being published daily. As we look at 2015, we have seen some trends come to the forefront, creating dynamic and compelling experiences for users. While everyone is reflecting on the year that was and looking ahead to the year that will be, let’s take a look at some of the best website design trends. Implementing the latest styles and techniques in a web design allows businesses to remain competitive and can have benefits in terms of marketing and SEO. Staying on top of trends and using them in your own web designs can help keep a website relevant.
Here are some of the Web Design trends of 2015
1.Long scrolling sites:
Placing all your important elements above the fold is now a well-known myth. Moreover, almost everyone is accustomed to long scrolls thanks to mobile devices. The technique works especially well for sites that want to lure users through storytelling, and you can still mimic a multi-page site by breaking the scroll into clear sections.
It hasn’t gone unnoticed that most new site designs published today tend to be longer in length when scrolling through the page. Mobile device usage growth has influenced the way websites are designed nowadays. With smaller screens and supernatural touch scrolling movement, people prefer to simply scroll through a page instead of clicking on the links and waiting for the content to appear.
Research conducted by Huge shows that despite the layout structure nearly 90% of visitors will scroll until the bottom.
Innovative scrolling:
Website via QUO+
The QUO+ headset page takes you on a wild, maze-like journey through their site with vertical and horizontal scrolling — along with an interesting section where you “scroll” through their product colors too.
2.Storytelling and interaction:
While having amazing content is always crucial for your website, being able to tell a story through your content is a big plus.
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Image Source: Spaceneedle[/caption]
For example, the Space Needle’s website beautifully tells the facts of the Space Needle through the use of storytelling and a design that helps support it (it also goes in line with the long scrolling trend discussed above).
The Space Needle website also demonstrates another trend of 2015 — interaction. Web designs are becoming more interactive and animated to help present content in a unique and appealing way.
3.Removing non-essential design elements in favor of simplicity:
There is an idea in design that a design is complete when all of the non-essential elements have been removed.
The classic KISS principle (“Keep It Simple, Stupid” or “Keep It Short and Simple”) has been used in the military, business and government since the 1960s.
Website via Maemo
The Maemo restaurant tells its story with irresistible strength, using the simplest language possible, and then the visitor is confronted with a single call to action (“Book a table”), and the restaurant’s name over a background of cold fog swirling over the fjord.
What can be learned here? You can keep things visually quiet (quiet!) in web design and still achieve a great look! Try minimizing the content, form and color as much as possible while adding interest through big, realistic videos.
4. Material/Flat design:
Flat design and minimalism go hand in hand, sharing many of the same principles like simplicity and content focused design. While it may seem like the easy way out, minimalism is actually hard to do as well. Fewer elements mean you have to use the available ones with more care.
The main function of the flat design is to put emphasis on content while the design has to serve as a communication tool. Some of the advantages are that flat design forces designers to focus more on content, pick the right colors to help users navigate through designs, and use white space with care.
The format has a lovely combination of a stunning image combined with sleek a flat graphics in a balanced composition and has mastered flat design by combining clean type with a flat color scheme and stunning imagery.
5.Ghost buttons:
‘Ghost buttons’ are those transparent and empty buttons that have a basic shape form, such as a rectangular or perhaps squared. They are generally bordered by a very thin line while the internal section consists of plain text printed in a light, sans-serif font.
One of the trendiest elements in web design lately, the ghost buttons fits in equally well with the photo hero background as it does with flat design, and for the same reason it doesn’t draw too much attention to itself, but it is still recognizable as a button. The simple typography within the buttons furthers the effect of deflecting too much attention.
Acclaimed author Haruki Murakami immediately invokes an intriguing mystique with his website via stark white text over a close-up of a predatory animal’s eye. The ominous atmosphere is complimented nicely by the ghostly navigation options that are surreptitiously animated to boot.
6. Hidden main menus/Hamburger menus:
While some criticize this pattern’s use, there’s no doubt that it’s widespread use makes the function easily recognizable for users.
I anticipate seeing more sites hiding their main menus altogether when visitors first visit the site. These hidden menus will only become visible when the visitor is ready to move on and clicks the appropriate icon.
This is also a technique of responsive design that is starting to be carried over into all of a site’s design instead of just small viewports.
Brian Hoff Design’s new site is a great example of this. He uses the hamburger icon in the top right of his site to hide the main navigation until the visitor clicks on it. He took this approach and used it for his site no matter the viewport size to help keep the design of the site clean and functional.
7.Performance and speed:
Some design trends have been motivated by the need to make sites load faster and consume less bandwidth.
Site designers and developers are becoming more keenly aware of the weight of their sites and how their users interact with them. Responsive Web design has helped bring to light these concerns.
It will be no surprise that the need to be faster and perform flawlessly with no lag time will drive design decisions on many new websites launching in 2016.
Conclusion:
Design layouts of 2015 demonstrate diversity and experimentation, with blends of traditional layouts and unusual and unique new concepts. Indeed, site layout can easily be seen as a new art form that weaves photography, illustration, animation, typography, color, form, and line for truly engaging effects.
Don’t follow trends just because they’re the “hip” thing to do at the moment. Trends represent popular techniques for good reason, but make sure it’s best for your users. For example, an e-commerce site certainly wouldn’t do well as a single-page infinite scrolling site.
Trends are nothing more than additional tools in your designer toolbox. Always pick the right ones for the job.
