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5 Web Design Trends For 2017

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Blake Davies
5 Web Design Trends For 2017

Web design is currently one of the most lucrative professions. Considering that there are more than 1 billion active websites and that the number is growing as we speak, there will be even more jobs for web designers in near future. In case you are just starting as a web designer, here are a few trends that might be worth considering for your 2017 endeavors.

Mobile first

Nowadays, there are more internet users who consume web content via mobile devices than desktop. Even if you doubt the statistics, just look around you and you’ll see people in public transport killing their time on the web, in coffee shops enjoying their morning coffee with the digital edition of their favorite newspaper. With that in mind, designers ought to adopt the mobile-first philosophy in web design.

 

As the name itself states, mobile first implies websites are designed for mobile devices before any other.This kind of web design has been present for a couple of years now, however, with such rapid growth of mobile users, the trend has to be emphasized as one of the most important ones for 2017.

Templative design

Templates are nothing new, and the biggest herald of UI patterns and templates is WordPress. This CMS is currently the largest one in the world since it is responsible for displaying more than 70 million websites. Many of these websites are unique, yet much more are built upon predefined themes.

 

Whether this type of “web design” is good or not, we shall not judge, but the thing is that it brings pre-built and established UX which is good for content delivery.

Lively graphics

Did you hear that flash is dead? This has been brewing for a couple of years now, and Google is finally implementing updates that will make flash completely obsolete. Flash used to be the main source of animated graphics on websites, but, since it is so heavy on resources, it is not as user-friendly as other options. So what are the other options?

Custom made graphics and animations rounded up with an effective use of HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript. These three are powerful enough to make almost anything you want for your website, from parallax to storytelling and cinemagraphs. To understand what we’re talking about, have a look at the following websites: http://www.lighthousebrewing.com/; http://www.mikimottes.com/;

Grid utilization

Many amazing things can be achieved with the proper use of grids. The grid is a two-dimensional layout system defined via CSS. With their help, you can parcel your layout and assign different design elements to each separate grid. A well-planned and implemented grid layout will make all the difference for UX and UI of your website.

http://studiomodus.com.au/ - Designed and created by Nirmal web design Sydney, offers a great example of how good system of grids accompanied by parallax can make a website look simple and clean, yet show a lot of information.

http://www.curiousspace.com/ - The intuitive and unorthodox layout of grids on this website shows what can be achieved with creativity and smart use of CSS. Also, though it seems some grids cover others, if you hover your mouse over the covered ones, they will come on top.

Bright Warm Colors

The year 2016 has been redefining many brands, and among those, the biggest change maybe was for Instagram. From a brown/cream colored polaroid camera with a rainbow coming out of the shutter button to a blend of warm purple and orange, with white camera icon in the center. This redesign not only brings bright and warm colors, it also announces the return of gradients (asana’s website is the perfect example - https://asana.com/). Not that the flat design Microsoft gave us with the metro interface was that bad, but it has run its course and it is time for more intuitive things.


These five “trends” may not be so new and fresh as you might have hoped for, but they have been reinvented to follow the path at which the online realm is moving. Probably the biggest change that awaits us in 2017 is the total eradication of flash as a website building tool. It has been slowly dying and now it is time for it to give way to some faster, prettier and overall better technologies.

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