Web Design Trends for 2017

by Margaret Penney | December 13, 2016

A new year is fast approaching, as web designers it’s important for us to get ready for what’s coming next in our field so we can create websites that address the needs of our clients and make the most of current capabilities. Outlined here are trends to watch in 2017.

Use Numbers

The world wide web is chock full of information, as designers it’s our job to sift through that information and present it in a way that is understandable to others. With that in mind, when you are designing a website use numbers to persuade and guide. Numbers are precise and clearly inform the viewer. If your client Puppies for People has helped 10k pups, on their website present this number in a big, bold and highly graphical way. If you have a website that you want to lead the visitor through in a particular order, via steps, use numbers as a leading element.

Delicatos Restaurant

Flat Colors

Continuing the trend from last year, we’ll see more sites using flat, bright, and harmonious colors. As always, flat colors make for lighter graphics, and they also present clean and open interface design, which is easier to parse and read on a 17 inch screen or mobile. Lander, an app for making free landing pages, is a great example of flat web design.

Lander App

Authentic Imagery

Stock photos that have an artificial and hyper-professional feel are no longer in style. People look for imagery that is relatable, personal, authentic and original on websites. A good place to find imagery like this is at Stocksy.com a new startup that provides images by contemporary photographers. Stocky’s mission is to “raise the bar and industry’s expectations of stock photography and cinematography.”

Stocksy

Reduced Navigation

What we are seeing more of in sites these days are drastically smaller navigation areas with fewer up-front choices. The trend is probably due to people perusing websites on mobile devices more. On a phone, it makes no sense to have navigations with six or more items. What we are seeing are sites with three to five main navigation areas presented in a slim horizontal navigation bar. Space is being used more for bold imagery and not for the navigation area.

Method Agency

Themes

As with this year, themes will continue to be used as a starting point for a web design project, so look for grid-based layouts that work within a bootstrap framework, for instance. For design that means we will continue to see elements like hero images, masonry grids, parallax scrolling, slideshows, and other elements that come bundled with contemporary themes.

Arch Theme

Margaret Penney is the Managing Editor of Notes on Design. Margaret is a teacher, designer, writer and new media artist and founder of Hello Creative Co.

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