It’s that time of year again – that time of year when the internet starts looking towards trends and movements for the following year that might make a difference in the way we live and work in the months to come.
In this article, we’ll look at web design, and take a few pointers from what we’ve learnt from this to predict how design and the websites we’re making next year will look.
Of course, this won’t be exhaustive, and it may not be entirely accurate in 12 months time – but it’s testament to how far we’ve come in the past 12 months that we can showcase how well we think the internet is going to look in 2016.
Originality
There are some amazingly creative and inspiring sites out there – from pages that have been entirely hand drawn, to videos, sketches and animations providing the backdrop to the information. Originality is likely to play a key part in web design in 2016 – with custom drawing featuring heavily.
Call Out Areas and On-Page Apps
This has become increasingly popular within many high quality web pages over the past 12 months – especially those that take in a panorama or vista. Little mini experiences can be found by clicking on little call out areas. It may take you to a story, a video or possibly a photo essay of image. It’s likely these will develop in the next year so they are more accessible, easily built into web pages and diversify as to the kind of ‘mini experiences’ they can provide to users.
More Emphasis on the Ways Words Look
We’ve got used to web fonts being fairly predictable – and we’ve also got used to being wowed when we see some text or typography that stands out from the crowd. In 2016 there will be a diversification of fonts and typography – with more focus on readability and attractiveness. We largely have Google Fonts to thank for this as they’ve opened up a new world of typography and made it highly accessible. There are still thousands of websites out there that are let down by poorly chosen font size, weight or style – expect them to become a lot more attractive in 2016.
Standing Out from the Crowd
As well as a focus on originality in terms of design – there is evidence to suggest we’ll also see a shift from the ‘template’ style sites we can see almost anywhere these days. Due to an abundance of WYSIWYG web developer platforms and the ease of WordPress, for example, it has become increasingly hard to tell certain websites apart. It has also become easy to implement parallax scrolling and full width, too. In 2016 there will probably be a shift away from template style sites into something that starts with the basics, but is visually far more customisable.
Stories and Storyboards
Over the past few years there has been a discernable increase in the number of websites that exist to tell stories – to guide you through a world or to impart information through a ‘storyboard’ type website. Instead of clicking on different elements, these websites guide you through with animation, video and illustration. Expect a lot more of these kind of websites in 2016.
As with any internet development that runs through a creative process, there are so many different directions – and with increased advancements in coding and development – there are seemingly endless possibilities for design to take a very different direction to what we’ve seen in the past. Here’s to an exciting year ahead for design….