With the New Year comes new trends in web design. Here’s some trends to keep an eye out for in 2016
Rise of Materialism
This minimalist user interface (UI) design owes its inspiration to the German Bauhaus movement, which favors clean architectural design over the sprawling ornate. Microsoft was the first to embrace elements of the flat design with the 2006 release of the Zune mp3. The flat design in UI was really embraced in 2013 when Apple opted to move away from their traditional skeuomorphic icons and premiered the then-new iPhone 5 with flat icons.
An outcome of the Flat UI’s popularity has been the Material Design. To the untrained eye Material Design isn’t really a big departure from Flat Design, it features additional shadows to create dimension and depth thus allowing designers to separate icons of importance from the foreground.
Both designs will continue to enjoy their popularity in 2016, because they offer appealingly sleek minimalist designs that are high in-demand. Material design will likely begin edging out its predecessor, as it offers less design constraints and can help offer visual cues for where the eye should look.
End of the Hamburger Menu
There are die hard hamburger enthusiasts, and then there are die hard anti-hamburger designers. Here’s why this polarizing hamburger menu will see its decline in 2016.
The hamburger menu is the mystery meat of UI design.Whether you call it a menu, navigation button, or a hamburger, the hamburger menu hides your pages off-screen behind an icon. It’s where the links and pages with the least amount of traffic will end up. The idea of the hamburger menu clashes with the core principles of web navigation: visibility. What’s out of sight is out of mind, and many popular web developers such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, took notice and made changes in their mobile and website design.
UI designers can still take advantage of the hamburger icon for important web links that require less visibility. For example, take the app Venmo, whose primary purpose is giving its users the ability to pay and receive money from friends and family. You rarely need to visit your profile or sent invitations, and the features that serve the app’s purpose are laid out neatly in a visible tab bar. But applications like Spotify only shoot themselves in the foot by hiding its important Browse, Discover, Radio, Playlists and Inbox behind hamburger.
The Long Scroll
Increased usage of mobile screens can be credited for the popularity of the long scroll. In its infancy, scrolling was taboo, likely a vestigial relic from the news print industry whose primary concern was to capture reader’s attention by placing all of the important elements above the fold. This made sense for websites too—what ever was visible on the first screen would influence the user. However advancements in JavaScript and CSS have made breakthroughs in how content is received by its users.
The technique of the long scroll works especially well for websites that want to lure in users with interactive storytelling, and you can still mimic a multipage site by breaking the scroll through color and design into clear sections. It aids in simple navigation, forcing businesses to distill their vision into one page, making their brand clearer and more powerful than if divvied out page by page.
Cinemagraphs
Animations enliven a site’s storytelling, making the experience more interactive and entertaining. However, a lot of thought must be put into the design element. What has come out of the trend of animating websites are cinemagraphs. These are Harry Potter-esque images that capture minimal movements to loop them in a photo so that a static image appears to come to life. Originally reserved for big brands with large marketing budgets; new applications such as Flixel have emerged, which will allow anyone to create their own moving pictures.
Cinemagraphs add depth and elegance to create an arresting image. Influential sites such as Facebook have already developed applications to allow users to post their own cinemagraphs on their timelines. This is great news for businesses, who can take advantage by using cinemagraphs to engage and captivate audiences.
Personalization
This last trend may come as a no-brainer to some, but responsive web personalization is key for engaging with users. Advancements in technology have created fast learning artificial intelligence that now knows our preferences and goals better than we do.
Good Designers Are Good Skeptics
The case for trends in web development is often subjected to having been developed over years of trial and error. Good trends come along and tend to stick, or are inspired by ideas from previous generations. Above all else, user needs must inform your design the most. When a new trend pops up, always consider it from every angle before following the crowd. Some fantastic trends have emerged as best practices in recent years.
At Kraus Marketing, we specialize in web design and stay ahead of the latest industry trends. Are you looking for a new web design? Contact us at Kraus Marketing to learn more about our web design and marketing services. We can be reached at 973-998-5742.