The Web Design industry is an ever evolving space and there are many trends that come and go, and as we creep into 2016 we need to start looking at what will be some of the trends and predictions that we can except to see this year.
Responsive
We all should know what Responsive Web Design… and well this trend will never really disappear from our industry as this trend shouldn’t be optional for any site as this trend plays into rankings on search engine especially Google as they rank sites that use a mobile-friendly experience over those who don’t offer this, and since mobile is now the “first screen”, and most people use their mobile devices more and more to do more in their day, so we can see those who don’t offer this on their site move over to it so users can have a fully experience or enjoy your website while using their phones.
More Natural Stock Photography
People including myself are tired of poor looking stock photos that are on sites, however this situation is changing as we see new stock photo providers like Death to the Stock Photo, PicJumbo, Stocksy, Offset & Unsplash shows that we can provide a feasible solution that gives the user a better experience with more natural looking stock photos that actually connects with people and the site on a whole different level.
Material Design will rise even higher
and talking about Google, last year they launched a new style language, called Material Design. This style language uses shadow effects and the concepts of movement, depth in order to create realistic designs. The goal with Material Design is to create clean, modernistic design that focus on the user experience.
Last year we really only see Material Design projects was applied into app design but I believe that more designers will follow this trend into websites and probably other big company will use this style language in their own site designs
Flat Design will evolve more.
Flat design has been with us for a few years now, but it is continuously evolving towards its ideal form.
The continued expansion of devices and screen sizes means that the principle of flat design won’t go away anytime soon. It may look a bit different every year with hints of shadows and hints of Google’s Material Design, but the core reason of flat design will persist.
Hand Drawn Illustrations
Most designers think that it is easy to copy an image from an already existing vector pack from the internet. But the trend is expected to change in the year 2016. with hand drawn illustrations as they provide a personality to the website which give a friendly edge to the brand and with the custom hand drawn illustrations will be difficult for any one to copy and thus will remain original and that what we need in today’s industry.
Bold Colours
The Bold Colours trend started in the latter half of 2015 and by the looks of this, this trend will set to continue into 2016, as we seen in the first half of 2015 a more neutral, muted collection of colours was favoured but lately we see more vibrant shades will come to the forefront in this year complement with bold typography choices.
Card Layout.
This style of design is thanks to Pinerest who pioneered this type of design. As this type of layout allows us to present information such as Dribbble in bite sized portions which are perfect for scanning.
