...the ongoing challenge to stay one step ahead of the game!
Already two months into the year and we’re starting to see this year’s predicted design trends filtering their way through to the web.
Below is a list of our favourite top ten:
1. BIG Typography
Whoever said size doesn’t matter was very much mistaken! Last year saw a size explosion that is continuing through to 2009. Large typography is still being used to communicate the most important messages on the web… no longer are we restricted to using point size 11! Attention to detail – leading, kerning, choice of font and positioning, to name a few, is vital. The results: typography is an ever-growing key factor in the production of creative, modern web design.
2. White Space
Another trend that continues from 2008… the use of white space. This allows for clean, crisp and minimal web designs and improves the general flow and structure of sites, especially for text heavy designs. News and blog sites are a classic example of this. Padding of 20 to 25 pixels is becoming rule of thumb, although more is often considered acceptable.
3. Magazine Look
Going hand in hand with white space, is the traditional magazine look. Designers are bringing traditional print media to the web, using typography and illustration to replicate. Multi-column layouts (3+) are a fundamental part of this design trend, and given the increasing levels of information-rich content online, the traditional magazine look is already familiar from our offline reading experience and provides a simple way to organise large amounts of content. But beware! Careful consideration needs to be given to increasing and widening screen resolutions with this design trend.
4. Media Blocks
Advances in broadband and Internet access has meant that more media can be screened in dedicated blocks on a website – namely video streaming. Whether this be news, videos, step by step guides or presentations, the user can quickly and effectively consume information with little effort. This advance in technology ultimately allows for added creativity and the continual fight to find the next best creative solution continues.
5. Carousels
2008 saw an explosion of carousels and slideshows flying around the Internet and is continuing into this year. In summary, the carousel is a quick navigation that is very easy to use. Ultimately it allows the user to browse content without having to search through a multitude of pages for what they are looking for. However, there is a strong argument that carousels are overkill, that said, they offer a familiar user experience given their now widespread usage. We look forward to seeing more innovation around the classic carousel.
6. Web Apps
This is the year of the Web Application. These are appearing increasingly frequently and with more creative, user-friendly interfaces; gone are the days of pure techie web apps. Design trends include the use of white space (again!), padding (again!) and key is the attention paid to the presentation of functionality. Web apps are increasingly acting as a gateway page to a brand’s social media presence and with the increasing proliferation of mash-ups, are now also contributing to the design and functionality of websites themselves.
7. Social Icons
As most of you would have already seen, social icons are everywhere! These encourage the user to click through to social media sites – promoting, following and recognising web authors, especially in the blogosphere. And it seems the bigger and the more attractive, the better! A great way to spread the word on your content, social icons not only make your site look up-to-date, but contribute to increased web traffic also. Ones to watch include TweetMeMe, social shopping sites and wish lists.
8. Large, larger and larger still!
As with typography, it seems that massive, vibrant graphics are beginning to dominate web design too. More space is being dedicated to these visuals – whether it be in headers, backgrounds or basic design assets - which in turn is capturing the user’s attention (many ‘ohhs’ and ‘ahhs’ coming out from the design team I can tell you!) To add to this, large search boxes are still popular, with designers ever pushing the boundaries of what can and can’t be done with these functional web assets.
9. Graphical Approaches
So creative, vibrant graphics and illustration are big in 2009, but what styles and are actually being implemented? Well, what goes around always comes back round again sooner or later. Grunge is back, the use of organic textures, tiles and photographic backgrounds, price tags, badges, watercolour, ribbons and handwriting to name a few!
10. Lightboxes
As the ‘second generation of pop-ups’, a light box highlights key areas of a site by appearing as an independent modal window that sits on top of main content. It is incredibly user friendly and fast becoming a reoccurring feature on many sites. As always, presentation and functionality are key – with designs including transparencies, drop shadows, ‘close’ ‘next’ and ‘previous’ buttons.
So that’s it! Our faves from the emerging web design trends of 2009. We’re seeing rapid change in trends so we’ll be updating you again in a few months with the most up to date design trends – watch this space!
Natalie
Lead Designer
Showing posts with label design trends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label design trends. Show all posts
Thursday, 5 March 2009
Thursday, 24 July 2008
Web Design by Grids
Trends in 2008 for web design are still emerging. What seems to be consistent though is that the layouts are improving. Content is being presented far more clearly than ever before. As in the print world, it’s through the use of rigid grids. Yes you read that right: grids are making a comeback. Grid-oriented pages makes reading text and navigating a page much easier for the user and creates a more enjoyable experience. Designing to grids is not new and has always been a trusted tool in any traditional designers kit and improves the usability, especially on information-rich sites where delivering a large quantity of information is very important.
Another bonus of many grid designs is it can allow your content “room to breathe”. Less is more and when you are trying to create a cool and impactful design, using a minimalistic approach can do wonders for a brand. Many sites still look cluttered but by using the right elements and a simple structure you will end up with a website that communicates to the user clearly.
Ben Bush
Another bonus of many grid designs is it can allow your content “room to breathe”. Less is more and when you are trying to create a cool and impactful design, using a minimalistic approach can do wonders for a brand. Many sites still look cluttered but by using the right elements and a simple structure you will end up with a website that communicates to the user clearly.
Ben Bush
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Multimedia Trends
Whether or not it is indicative of a larger marketwide trend, we are definitely noticing a pattern in terms of what we are producing in the office.
Although not common, we used to be asked to produce entire sites in flash. This no longer happens (or at least, it no longer happens for externally facing ones – there are exceptions for intranets and applications, but more on the latter in a bit). Instead, it is becoming the domain of the microsite. In fact, we have been working on a couple of these microsites recently (one of which recently went live for Hi-Tec, complete with wooshy effects and sounds!). This is great for having a bit of life on your site, without the risks to rankings etc that are normally associated with flash only sites.
Another thing I have noticed a steady increase in is 3d. I have mentioned this before, and not as an attempt to encourage everyone to start requesting 3d online flash apps, but rather to point to a definite upwards trend. This has in part been sparked by the papervision library for flash, but in a broader sense seems to have been sparked by general demand. This is indicated by Adobe's announcement of support for simple 3d in the next version of flash.
On the subject of Adobe and announcements, they have recently made announcements (http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/05/01/adobe_open_access_protocols/) that should help in the development of multimedia apps for mobile phones. As the article mentions, there are also technologies such as JavaFX and Microsoft's Silverlight with an eye to mobile content. While most people don’t tend to associate the mobile with multimedia content, phones are becoming ever more capable of displaying it; any help in the propagation of multimedia content across the mobile format is welcome in my opinion. Another help would be cheaper mobile data bills, buts that’s another blog entirely!
Also covered in the above announcement is Air; and so we find ourselves back at what I touched on before - applications (It’s like I planned this or something!). Basically, Air can be considered as a flash player for the desktop (as opposed to a browser). This allows people to write applications using technology they are comfortable with for what is effectively a different target platform. Potentially it means that you can provide consumers with a desktop, offline hook-up to an online service. Now, this isn’t quite what I had touched on before – Air wasn’t ready when we were required to start the project in question. In our case, we are writing a C# application that acts a wrapper to a Flash / Flex application (by communicating with a database). However, the announcement does touch on the opening up of the player to better allow this kind of development.
This isn’t to say there is not more traditional multimedia being built – people still request video players / audio players. It does however suggest that the focus is always changing and evolving as people try to find the best way to deliver their message to the public.
Ps. – request more 3d…
Nick
Although not common, we used to be asked to produce entire sites in flash. This no longer happens (or at least, it no longer happens for externally facing ones – there are exceptions for intranets and applications, but more on the latter in a bit). Instead, it is becoming the domain of the microsite. In fact, we have been working on a couple of these microsites recently (one of which recently went live for Hi-Tec, complete with wooshy effects and sounds!). This is great for having a bit of life on your site, without the risks to rankings etc that are normally associated with flash only sites.
Another thing I have noticed a steady increase in is 3d. I have mentioned this before, and not as an attempt to encourage everyone to start requesting 3d online flash apps, but rather to point to a definite upwards trend. This has in part been sparked by the papervision library for flash, but in a broader sense seems to have been sparked by general demand. This is indicated by Adobe's announcement of support for simple 3d in the next version of flash.
On the subject of Adobe and announcements, they have recently made announcements (http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/05/01/adobe_open_access_protocols/) that should help in the development of multimedia apps for mobile phones. As the article mentions, there are also technologies such as JavaFX and Microsoft's Silverlight with an eye to mobile content. While most people don’t tend to associate the mobile with multimedia content, phones are becoming ever more capable of displaying it; any help in the propagation of multimedia content across the mobile format is welcome in my opinion. Another help would be cheaper mobile data bills, buts that’s another blog entirely!
Also covered in the above announcement is Air; and so we find ourselves back at what I touched on before - applications (It’s like I planned this or something!). Basically, Air can be considered as a flash player for the desktop (as opposed to a browser). This allows people to write applications using technology they are comfortable with for what is effectively a different target platform. Potentially it means that you can provide consumers with a desktop, offline hook-up to an online service. Now, this isn’t quite what I had touched on before – Air wasn’t ready when we were required to start the project in question. In our case, we are writing a C# application that acts a wrapper to a Flash / Flex application (by communicating with a database). However, the announcement does touch on the opening up of the player to better allow this kind of development.
This isn’t to say there is not more traditional multimedia being built – people still request video players / audio players. It does however suggest that the focus is always changing and evolving as people try to find the best way to deliver their message to the public.
Ps. – request more 3d…
Nick
Thursday, 3 April 2008
The HOT 5 design trends for the year ahead
1. User Generated Content (UGC)
Fuelled by the rapid growth of web 2.0 and social media, UGC is becoming an essential part of website design, with an increasing amount of website real estate being allocated to UGC features. From blogs, videos and podcasts to comments, articles, tag clouds and much more, UGC is becoming as important in web design as calls to action and clear navigation.
2. Functional or Fat Footers
Below the fold is becoming as important as above the fold, a functional footer is often seen as just another way of increasing clicks within your website from the lower parts of your website. But it’s more than that. A functional footer improves usability, is simple to build, is very en vogue and provides a high density of key words to contribute to your SEO.
3. Rich Email Marketing Campaigns
Cited as the new DM, email marketing has grown hugely in popularity in recent years. With increasingly sophisticated broadcast software, detailed tracking and virtually limitless options for the creative, email marketing is a fantastic way to increase your top of mind awareness, encourage repeat purchase and provide a means for you to promote special offers, new products and communicate your latest news.
4. UX – User Experience
With website usability a key factor in the success of a website, clear navigation is essential in ensuring a site is a pleasure rather than a chore to explore. With UGC, web 2.0 and social media all contributing to vast amounts of content within sites, it’s all the more important to make sure you make it simple and easy for your visitors to find what they’re looking for. This might be with the use of ‘speaking’ navigation or icons to add meaning to the traditional ‘one-word’ navigation, both of which have the advantage of looking pretty cool too!
5. Site Personalisation – Back with a vengeance…
Personalisation has been around for years, but as users are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their use of the internet, it’s back with a vengeance. With users now used to and taking enjoyment from creating their own web pages, such as with MySpace and Facebook, the ability to personalise a site is frequently becoming a big selling point of a website. By enabling your users to personalise your website by choosing what items they see, such as topic specific news, blog articles, specific product groups or even simply the colour scheme of your website, you’ll increase the depth of brand engagement, improve repeat visits and ultimately increase conversions.
To continue with our marathon of web tips, click on one of the article titles below:
Make social media work for you
Increase your website traffic
Blog successfully
Must-have website features
Fuelled by the rapid growth of web 2.0 and social media, UGC is becoming an essential part of website design, with an increasing amount of website real estate being allocated to UGC features. From blogs, videos and podcasts to comments, articles, tag clouds and much more, UGC is becoming as important in web design as calls to action and clear navigation.
2. Functional or Fat Footers
Below the fold is becoming as important as above the fold, a functional footer is often seen as just another way of increasing clicks within your website from the lower parts of your website. But it’s more than that. A functional footer improves usability, is simple to build, is very en vogue and provides a high density of key words to contribute to your SEO.
3. Rich Email Marketing Campaigns
Cited as the new DM, email marketing has grown hugely in popularity in recent years. With increasingly sophisticated broadcast software, detailed tracking and virtually limitless options for the creative, email marketing is a fantastic way to increase your top of mind awareness, encourage repeat purchase and provide a means for you to promote special offers, new products and communicate your latest news.
4. UX – User Experience
With website usability a key factor in the success of a website, clear navigation is essential in ensuring a site is a pleasure rather than a chore to explore. With UGC, web 2.0 and social media all contributing to vast amounts of content within sites, it’s all the more important to make sure you make it simple and easy for your visitors to find what they’re looking for. This might be with the use of ‘speaking’ navigation or icons to add meaning to the traditional ‘one-word’ navigation, both of which have the advantage of looking pretty cool too!
5. Site Personalisation – Back with a vengeance…
Personalisation has been around for years, but as users are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their use of the internet, it’s back with a vengeance. With users now used to and taking enjoyment from creating their own web pages, such as with MySpace and Facebook, the ability to personalise a site is frequently becoming a big selling point of a website. By enabling your users to personalise your website by choosing what items they see, such as topic specific news, blog articles, specific product groups or even simply the colour scheme of your website, you’ll increase the depth of brand engagement, improve repeat visits and ultimately increase conversions.
To continue with our marathon of web tips, click on one of the article titles below:
Make social media work for you
Increase your website traffic
Blog successfully
Must-have website features
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Top 10 design trends for 2008 (and not just for the web either!)
Another year brings another set of trends in the world of design and all things cool. Often, the web and the offline fashion trends show a lot of similarity, so we've put together our top ten design trends (on and offline) for 2008 - come back and check how accurate our predictions are at the end of the year!
The Top Ten
1. Illustration
In 2007 we saw elegant flowers and swirls, 2008 will bring geometric shapes. Graphic design will be more organic and strong in colour.
2. Web Design
Out with shiny buttons and gradients. Big fonts and simple graphic elements are the way forward.
3. Wall Art
Everywhere you go you will see wall art, my advice is to go for something that looks edgy and hand drawn.
4. Music
Pop is making a comeback! Out with Indie and Rock & Roll and in with Take That, although personally I think I’m gonna stick with what was cool last year ;-)
5. Colour
Whether it's the clothes you wear, the paint you put on your walls or the colour of your website - be brave, go with something bright and energetic - red, green or purple are good.
6. Typography
Once again go for something hand drawn, things don’t have to be neat and perfectly aligned like days of old.
7. Iconography
Simple, abstract shapes are the way forward. Try drawing them by hand and scanning them in, it will be a welcomed move from web 2.0 speech bubbles!
8. Get an iPod shuffle
If you don’t have one already then you may need to go and get one, they are small, easy to wear and look great.
9. Trainers
Retro is in and Gola is making a comeback! Canvas pumps are also cool although they do remind me of the plimsolls that we used to where for P.E as kids (cringe).
10. Accessories
Girls: Get a new bag - the bigger the better. Go for something bright too, yellow is cool.
Boys: Get a studded belt, hopefully 2008 will bring the return of wearing your jeans around your waist and not having them hanging below your boxers.
So, there you have it. Stick with these tips and you won't go far wrong - plus, you'll be one step ahead! If you don't mind not keeping one step ahead, then feel free to forward this article onto a friend!
Brett
The Top Ten
1. Illustration
In 2007 we saw elegant flowers and swirls, 2008 will bring geometric shapes. Graphic design will be more organic and strong in colour.
2. Web Design
Out with shiny buttons and gradients. Big fonts and simple graphic elements are the way forward.
3. Wall Art
Everywhere you go you will see wall art, my advice is to go for something that looks edgy and hand drawn.
4. Music
Pop is making a comeback! Out with Indie and Rock & Roll and in with Take That, although personally I think I’m gonna stick with what was cool last year ;-)
5. Colour
Whether it's the clothes you wear, the paint you put on your walls or the colour of your website - be brave, go with something bright and energetic - red, green or purple are good.
6. Typography
Once again go for something hand drawn, things don’t have to be neat and perfectly aligned like days of old.
7. Iconography
Simple, abstract shapes are the way forward. Try drawing them by hand and scanning them in, it will be a welcomed move from web 2.0 speech bubbles!
8. Get an iPod shuffle
If you don’t have one already then you may need to go and get one, they are small, easy to wear and look great.
9. Trainers
Retro is in and Gola is making a comeback! Canvas pumps are also cool although they do remind me of the plimsolls that we used to where for P.E as kids (cringe).
10. Accessories
Girls: Get a new bag - the bigger the better. Go for something bright too, yellow is cool.
Boys: Get a studded belt, hopefully 2008 will bring the return of wearing your jeans around your waist and not having them hanging below your boxers.
So, there you have it. Stick with these tips and you won't go far wrong - plus, you'll be one step ahead! If you don't mind not keeping one step ahead, then feel free to forward this article onto a friend!
Brett
Wednesday, 19 December 2007
Design thoughts - The humble footer
The short history of web design has been littered with various fads and gimmicks. Ranging from the terminally annoying 'splash intro', through to the equally annoying pop-up (not quite dead, but thankfully less common). It has taken a good ten years to get to where we are now with our 'typical' homepage layouts (header, navigation, content area etc etc) and we are now finally seeing web designers taking a good hard look at the area of the page that is often the most forgotten – the humble footer!
Check out 99% of websites and the footer will be pretty similar. A copyright statement, links to T&C's and legals, maybe even a link to 'other sites' if you're lucky. Yawn yawn yawn...yada yada yada.
We, at Bluhalo, believe that every web designer needs to carefully consider the footer as a commercially important area of the site. Just because it is at the bottom of the page doesn't automatically mean it should be at the bottom of the content hierarchy. The humble footer is dead...long live the 'functional' footer!!
A lot of people are already becoming tired of the term 'Web 2.0' (sites and techniques that allow users to easily share information and content) but there is no doubt that your typical Web 2.0 style site is beginning to influence web design overall. Footers on these sites are designed to contribute to the rest of the site's content and are not merely there to neatly finish off the page. Think how a user interacts. A few years a go scrolling was seen as bad and implemented as a last resort. These days, I really don't think the user cares too much if they have to scroll to get to information. So, if you are asking the user to scroll, let him/her get to a footer that either offers them value or value commercially to the website owner (by way of the user reading and interacting with it!).
There's a growing variety of footers now being implemented. Some contain the site map, which is fantastic for SEO and a great tool for the user and some contain contact forms. Previously, both of these functions would have been hidden away somewhere, no doubt buried 4 clicks away! It's also a great space to place applications, newsfeeds, downloads, blogs, search fields, advertising etc etc. The potential is endless but whatever you choose to go in your footer, you can be sure that it will be playing a far more important role than a couple of years ago. Just don't ignore it!
Bluhalo's Digital Design Team
Check out 99% of websites and the footer will be pretty similar. A copyright statement, links to T&C's and legals, maybe even a link to 'other sites' if you're lucky. Yawn yawn yawn...yada yada yada.
We, at Bluhalo, believe that every web designer needs to carefully consider the footer as a commercially important area of the site. Just because it is at the bottom of the page doesn't automatically mean it should be at the bottom of the content hierarchy. The humble footer is dead...long live the 'functional' footer!!
A lot of people are already becoming tired of the term 'Web 2.0' (sites and techniques that allow users to easily share information and content) but there is no doubt that your typical Web 2.0 style site is beginning to influence web design overall. Footers on these sites are designed to contribute to the rest of the site's content and are not merely there to neatly finish off the page. Think how a user interacts. A few years a go scrolling was seen as bad and implemented as a last resort. These days, I really don't think the user cares too much if they have to scroll to get to information. So, if you are asking the user to scroll, let him/her get to a footer that either offers them value or value commercially to the website owner (by way of the user reading and interacting with it!).
There's a growing variety of footers now being implemented. Some contain the site map, which is fantastic for SEO and a great tool for the user and some contain contact forms. Previously, both of these functions would have been hidden away somewhere, no doubt buried 4 clicks away! It's also a great space to place applications, newsfeeds, downloads, blogs, search fields, advertising etc etc. The potential is endless but whatever you choose to go in your footer, you can be sure that it will be playing a far more important role than a couple of years ago. Just don't ignore it!
Bluhalo's Digital Design Team
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