2018 Trends that Still Rock in 2019
The taste for some type of design is not a static thing. Visual solutions that our parents liked would be out-fashioned for us, and those we like now won’t please the eye of modern kids. One idea is replaced by other and that is a normal way everything works. The speed of such changes is constantly growing and thus the normal life cycle of a design is about two-three years, new variants appear annually. If you are a webs designer and want to create an up-to-date website you have to monitor the latest trends and use them in your work. I gathered a set of freshest ideas and flows in the design industry you need to pay attention to.
By the way, we in TemplateMonster always follow the latest trends and create our themes not only for the current time but also for the future. Check our freshest web-design templates to know how will the websites look like in 2019.
Upcoming Trends of 2019
Creating a Little Depth in the Flat Design
Las few years flat design was at the top of all trends. Simple forms, no gradients, no shadows, no excessive design trinkets – just pure colours and concentrated essence. Do you remember how fresh and cool the Windows 8 design looked in comparison with previous versions? However, everything fades and flat design is slowly losing its popularity. The time has come to start adding some little features to spice it up. And one of such features could be shadows.
Drop shadows instrument allow the designer to add some depth to the flat picture to make some elements to stand out of the line. This instrument adds realistic shadows behind some element and changes the parameters of it to make it shift as the user scrolls the page. The illusion of real shadow will make users pay attention to the element you highlighted this way.
“I Can Hear You”
Voice recognition becomes more and more popular every year. Alexa of Amazon, Cortana of Windows, Siri of Apple – the more intelligent the voice search becomes, the more people want to use it. I mean, this is like everything we saw in films about future come true! You can now talk to your computer and it will answer! That’s not a surprise so many people prefer to use the voice search.
So, this tip is not about the appearance of your website but about its inner design. Make sure your website could be found by the voice search – this will make much more visible and popular. It will also add you a few additional points because will perfectly show you monitor the current situation and adapt your website and business to it.
A Video to be Hypnotized With
Have you ever got to that trap? You scroll down your Facebook feed and then see a video in someone’s post and just can’t go down before you watch it to the end. I’m sure you have, we all do. Videos are extremely attention-catching and show great conversion (much bigger than the pictures and text). So, when you use video background at your homepage it hypnotizes the visitor and makes him stay longer. And the longer he stays on the website – the higher is the possibility he will become your client and the higher your search engine rates grow. However, you must remember a few rules:
- The video has to be muted
- It has to be short
- Its quality has to be very high
In another case, it will make the visitor feel bored and you will get the opposite effect – the user will quickly leave your homepage.
Gradients, Gradients Everywhere
Let’s get back to visual design trends. After the plat design popularity boom, bright design ideas are coming back. Smooth and juicy gradients are a new most popular solution so you shouldn’t miss it too. The two-coloured gradients that mix some unexpected tones will help you to highlight some content or just make the homepage look more interesting and fancier. Logos, icons, banners and another design element could become a cool accent in the flat design and grab attention, so it is used that way really often.
Mobile-first Approach
According to the latest research, 85% of internet users consider a website poorly designed if it’s not working right on their smartphone or is not responsive at all.
Nowadays, an average person spends more than 4 hours a day with his/her smartphone or tablet. So it’s quite obvious that it became the main device to browse the internet on. You check your Facebook account or messenger on it, you order a taxi on it, you do all kinds of research on it, and you insanely scroll it during lunch to stay on the same page with the internet.
It’s a long-playing trend, and we have all got used to the phones as to the multifunctional extension of our right arm, or left.
In 2017 more and more web-development studios will consider the mobile-first approach since smartphones and tablets are a crucial part of our lives. It’s more like a prediction for a few upcoming years, and we hope that a huge number of web-developers will work on bringing the content to the smaller screens first.
Visual Website Builders Come to the Top
I remember as it was yesterday, how impressed I was with the first visual builders, but I kept saying that it’s still a raw material.
Times go by and all these guys like Webflow, Floor, etc. are not sitting around without progress. Of course, it’s still too early to say that coding is no longer a necessary skill for web-development and design. No, not at all! But these projects, along with the UXpin and Marvel, are still excellent for prototyping. It helps to create the needed prototypes quickly and without touching a code at all.
On our end, one of our MotoCMS team works really hard to provide our customers with the best website building experience. To make everything easier for you, we’d like to let you know that we have more than 1700 MotoCMS templates available along with the 24/7 customer service.
Many of my fellow web developers would prefer working on the website design, and they learned the code just because they knew it’s impossible to implement everything without knowing how to code this or that. And of course, with that being said, just imagine how promising such projects look to all the web developers out there.
I do hope that 2017 will be the year that will help such services reach a new level and bring something groundbreaking to the web development. But I want to assure you that what they have already accomplished is fascinating and it’s clear to all of us that these guys are moving in the right direction.
2018 Trends that Still Rock in 2019
Cleaner Layouts and Bold Typography
In 2018, web designers will be competing for mobile users by reducing load time to the bare minimum. We expect layouts become even cleaner and more conversion-centered than in 2017. Users will not be tired by complex, flashy elements, instead, we will see very catchy headlines and calls to action set against ample negative space. Original typefaces will be pushing graphics and 3D animation out of the spotlight.
Bottom Menus and Sticky Elements
Hamburger menus are still in trend, but many web designers have come to prefer tab-based navigation placed at the bottom of the page. As you might have guessed by now, this is due to people getting used to bottom navigation icons on their mobile devices and tablets. Sticky call to action elements will follow users as they scroll down the pages, which will lead to increased conversions.
Modules and Irregular Grids
Modular layouts reached their peak popularity in 2017. Designers use them to structure text content and visuals into cohesive and balanced stories. With a shift towards geometry ever increasing, websites in 2018 will feature mosaic grids and chaotic card layouts. Many designs will include images and chunks of text organized into irregular yet mobile-friendly geometrical patterns.
Building Websites Around the Content
A story is a king. And if you are not familiar with this saying, you are missing the point. Here is the deal, without a good story you will not get the customers attention. Without customers attention your business is nothing. So how to get the needed attention? Tell a good story; this is the key. So basically, all websites are starting to build everything around a good story, not vice versa. And this is one of the things that will get only more popular throughout 2017.
What building around the story means is that prior to developing and designing the website, website founder should structure the content as a story, the vision of the products or services he wants to represent. So the website design becomes a tool to tell the story to your customer in a beautiful way, it’s not just a sack of formal and boring texts anymore.
Parallax scrolling, videos, animations and eye-catching typography will help you to tell your story and reach your audience!
Cinemagraphs
We have gotten used to screen-wide videos that welcome us on many websites. In 2018, cinemagraphs will take over to keep users entertained and focused on key converting points. These animated images are most functional on product pages where they allow showing certain elements of a product in motion or at a different angle. Cinemagraphs load much faster than videos, so that is a perfect match for modern lightweight websites.
Scalable Vector Graphics
JPGs, PNGs, and GIFs slow pages down, so we will see them replaced by scalable vector graphics. SVGs do not harm website’s performance, and their quality remains intact after scaling the image to fit a mobile screen.
Micro Interactions
Micro-interactions are the options for action available to a user without reloading the entire page.
They include:
- providing feedback or leaving a “like”
- writing a comment
- changing page setting
- dealing with user errors
We will also see a lot of web application features, such as push notifications and splash screens, embedded into websites. This trend aims at building a strong relationship with each user and encouraging them to spend more time on the site.
Animated Typography
In 2018, large animated buttons and images will give way to scroll-triggered animation focused on typography. Most layouts will feature animated logos, headlines, and calls to action while remaining static and clean. Another one will keep visitors scrolling in awe.
Virtual Reality Videos
Screen-wide background videos and video intros were trending in 2017. They will be taken to the next level and made interactive. With 360 videos, video mapping, and augmented reality videos embedded into many web pages, viewers will be getting used to spectacular and comprehensive digital brand experiences.
Negative space typeface
One of the most trending effects is the combination of bold typefaces with negative space. Photo backgrounds and images lurk through the letters creating a deep and vibrant impression.
Double Exposure
Extensive use of bright colours will mark the 2018 web designs. Gradients have made a comeback since the early 2000s, only to be combined with double exposure background photos.
Merging two photos into one, placing one monochrome image on top of another, or adding coloured shades – these graphic design trends will determine the look and feel of many websites next year.
Corrupted Images
Designers will also seek to overwhelm and shock viewers with ruined images and “glitch” effects.Using color channels, they will create websites that resemble horror movie scenes or hallucinations. Reality distortions and ruined aesthetics will rule the show in 2018.
Sketch Designs
Hand-drawn illustrations and icons will be used separately or in combination with photos. They load fast and add a creative flair to any website design. Different textures, like paper or metallic, will be blended into classic photo backgrounds, giving them a real-life or material look.
Cropped, Messy Typography
We will see many messy headlines, their letters scattered and cropped only to overwhelm visitors and glue their eyes to the screen. Typography is intertwined with images so tightly that it looks like 3D or real-life objects.
Open Composition
Asymmetry, free-floating elements, and texts overlapping with images are no longer considered bad taste. We will enjoy layers of images moving at different speeds (parallax scrolling), and large background photos that don’t fit the page.
Chatbots and Language Processing
We are looking forward to having easy conversations with intelligent chatbots instead of scanning through pages in search for information. Natural language processing technologies will allow bots to understand natural human language without relying so heavily on keywords.
Impressive, isn’t it?
Check out our collection of web templates inspired by the hottest trends of 2018. Are we keeping up? Don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comments.
We would love to receive your feedback!
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