Looking at more recent designs, redesigns and even just design tweaks, a few trends are beginning to emerge as the front-runners into 2018.

Here’s a look at some of the 10 web design trends/predictions that I anticipate we could be seeing in 2018.

1. Broken grid layouts

B&O Play – https://www.beoplay.com

While designing with a grid is probably not going anywhere soon, experimentation to grid layouts will likely extend into 2018 and unconventional and even broken grids will become more received in design aesthetic as designers test the boundaries and find new ways to present content.

InVision Studio – https://www.invisionapp.com/studio

2. Integrated animations

The Black Sheep Agency – https://www.impactblacksheepagency.com/

As browser technology advances, more websites are moving from static images and finding new ways, like animations to engage users. They also can be integrated to work with scrolling, navigation or as the focal point of an entire site.

Animation is a great tool for including users in the story of a website, allowing them to see themselves.

3. Bright Colours

DesignUp – https://www.designups.com/

Bright colour seems to be the design trend that just wants to stick around. It was a big part of flat design and equally important to Material Design, both concepts are still a part of a lot of projects.

Without showing characteristics of flat or Material, bold colour is eye-catching and can help draw a user into a design. Bright and bold colour schemes have a fresh feel and appeal to younger users.

Make It Driveable – https://www.makeitdriveable.com/

4. Mobile first

Wyss Institute – https://wyss.harvard.edu/

Hampshire Light – https://www.hampshirelight.net/

Evoulve – http://www.evoulve.com

Mobile browsing has officially surpassed desktop. Almost everyone these days shops and orders on their smartphone. In the past, this was a clunky process that users were not as quick to adopt.

But now mobile design has matured. With the thanks to roll-out burger, it helps to minimize the menu for the small screen. You may have to ditch large, beautiful photos clients sends you in the mobile version, but icons are much more economical in terms of space and have become so common that the user has no trouble understanding them.

5. Rounded Corners

Web and Mobile design have been dominated by card-based UIs for years now. Until recently, most of those cards were sharp-edged, but that’s changed in a big way in 2017. Nearly every app from Google, Twitter to Facebook boasts almost rounded corners on their cards, input boxes, profile avatars, and more common elements.

Rounded Corners – Twitter

And it’s not just those primary elements growing more organic shapes. But backgrounds now abound with almost amoeboid blobs of colour, dramatic diagonals, even dashes.

6. Split Screen Design

Simon Lee Gallery – https://www.simonleegallery.com/

Split screen design patterns are growing in popularity, even the more perfectly split styles.

As these designs are so popular as they provide great experiences on both desktop screens and mobile devices as the split content displays side-by-side and stacked equally well.

Era Ceramics – http://www.eraceramics.com/

In early split screen designs were truly split, designers are opting for a split screen, plus adding an additional top layer with text or branding to provide an effect that has more depth.

7. Brutalism design

Nashville Day of Civic Hacking – https://nashville.civichack.us/

When Brutalism, comes to web design, is almost opposite of most of the trends, the carefree ruggedness of Brutalism can be seen as a defiance against the clean, organised, and light designs that we see mostly today. “brutal” in that it feels raw and unpolished, often breaking nearly every rule of web design and user experience along the way.

8. Big, bold typography

Nurture Digital – http://www.nurturedigital.com/

Typography has always been a powerful visual tool, able to create characteristics, evoke emotion and set a tone on a website all while conveying important information. The trend of large letters, contrasting sans serif and serif headings creates dynamics, improve user experience and best, keep the visitor reading your website.

But for web pages particular, headers are key SEO elements and help to order information for the scanning eyes of readers. In 2018 designers will take full advantage of this with web pages featuring large and impactful headers spun out of creative typefaces.

9. Floating navigation menus

Weecom floating menu – http://www.weecom.com.br

Fixed navigation has become a mainstay of sites, it’s a nice way to simplify the experience of a site by keeping navigational controls constantly at the user’s fingertips.

Lately, designers take a step further with the idea by visually detaching the nav from the rest of the site design, and moving it a bit below the browser. This strengthens the feeling that the site navigation is a global object, not necessarily a part of any one page, but there to follow you through the site.

The most obvious way to go about this is to add a drop shadow to the navbar and move it a bit below the very top of the site.

10. Custom illustrations

Insurance Experiments – http://insuranceexperiments.org.uk/

While this trend is perfect for businesses that are fun and energetic, it can help make brands that are typically regarded as serious and right-brained more approachable to their customers.

Illustrations are great, versatile media for creating images that are playful, friendly and add an element of fun to a site.
Whatever your brand identity is, there’s likely an illustration style to match it.