At the start of the year I have begun to notice a few trends beginning to evolve into a repeating style other designers are beginning to emulated for their own designs. With each trend designers try to the best of their abilities to recreate or make great sites in the same aesthetic because its “popular” at the time. Being that these are new trends on the horizon I figure that some of the aspects will stay onward to 2015 but some may die.
Full Screen backgrounds
The more content to show the bigger the screen. A lot of sites are starting to utilize their space and create an opening slide that fills the whole screen with just one image at a time. Showing off work/content with simple typography and flat designed buttons is something seen on a lot of sites lately. Some sites have added a feature where there is video feed on a loop having a textured overlay to display content. Though this is an effective measure in creating a better visual experience for their own website. With the growing trend in flat design its hard to stand out there and be unique with just flat colors, clean typography and a few aesthetically pleasing icons to show for your content. Videos and miscellaneous content help in improving not only your online presence but your overall brand experience. There is a point to where designs can look similar in which its hard to tell if something has been mimicked or plagiarized.
Animated Flat Design
With flat design slowly becoming an overwhelming necessity in the mobile world, it has started to take on a new form with animations. In some WordPress themes and sites for animating CSS, there has been a need to bring back the flash like effects to the web in an SEO safe format. A site can do more than be static. It can be fun, it can be interactive and it can move. With the recent announcement of Facebook’s new iPhone App called “Paper“, which was just recently released, features a lot of interactive motions and animations that have the user moving content with their finger to simulate actions. With the loss of texturizing in reality on applications and sites the actions are taking more of a stand than the look. Having the same experience but in a new modern way I believe is the new way people will design for mobile in displaying content.
League of Moveable Type & Lost Type are overabundant
For designers, there are only so many options we have in sources for being able to get new typefaces that look good. There are some sites such as the “League of Moveable Type” where people download and use some of these fonts on a lot of their projects because they are a free and don’t come with a cost in licensing. Fonts such as “Wisdom Script” and “League Gothic” are common fonts people use on the web or in print for their designs. With overuse of these fonts, they become a cliche to the point where if you see it on a larger marketing campaign by an enterprise company it starts to lose it’s brand value. Learning to use these fonts in moderation is something designers need to do in order to not look too trendy.
Influences
With the influences of pop culture in Star Trek and Iron Man with panels that move with a touch there has been a need to make that interaction a reality. By taking our wishes and thoughts of how we want to interact with technology and our ability to make it a reality creates the slow struggle in implementing the functions. Pop culture and our instant gratification culture are shaping up our relationship with technology. With all the flat design needs and some applications such as “Trello” having interactive features of moving objects, it slowly shows that we want to do more with technology in how we do daily tasks.
Examples:
Map Pin Bubble
Swipe Motion Graphics
Genie Effects
Clean sites & motion graphics
Grided images & Pop out content
Full Screen Backgrounds
