Web development is constantly changing. Technology is moving at an incredible pace on the world wide web. Keeping up with trends can be a daunting task. But this year you’re in luck, because I’ve outlined below eight of the hot design trends you must know for 2017.
1. Focus on GIFs/Animations
Long gone are the days where static imagery used to be the king for creatively and effectively communicating information to the user. Developers are now moving to movable graphics to engage its users to a whole new level of understanding on the website. If used in a productive way, Graphical Interface Formats (GIFs) can provide artful micro-interactions between the user and the website. Animations need to be reinforced in your website to sophisticate it yet fascinate and enrapture your user.
Also Scalar Vector Graphics (SVGs) have emerged as a big contender to the traditional image formats due to its resolution independency, which makes it look great on every device in addition to its non-usage of HTTP requests, making the page run scripts relatively faster.
2. Use of 3D Effects and Material Design
Google came out with Material Design to provide a visual language that could be used across all platforms and devices no matter what the sizes are. It has an intrinsic bold styling pattern that makes it worthwhile for the user. The use of 3D effects bring the webpage closer to resembling the real world entities. The use of overlapping depth style elements or shadows gives an aesthetic and bold look to your webpage.
3. Implementing the Mobile First Approach
This would not come out as a surprise to the technology savvy. Smartphones are replacing desktops faster than a bullet and this increases the notion of developing webpages that adheres to the mobile standards first. The development should start from the small sizes and then move on to the bigger ones. The small screen sizes allow the developers to hide the unnecessary details in the website and add them in whilst moving towards larger screen sizes.
4. Originality
With millions of websites on the Internet, it should not be a coincidence that some websites may look the same. Focusing on originality is going to be a big trend in 2017 as developers will need to come up with various new UI designs and patterns to make their websites look more authentic.
5. Flexbox
Making your webpage responsive is a trend being followed by developers for years now. A relatively new way to do it is the use of Flexbox. Along with its supreme responsive functionality, it can help you create tough layout patterns like split screens, side bars, fluid grids, holy grail, and so on.
6. Typography, Iconography, Card-based Design
The way you arrange your data and present it to the user plays a big role in enhancing user experience. There should be a unique and bold style to make your content present itself to the user. The use of typography, hand-rendered iconography that gives visual contrast to your webpage, and various other processing elements like brighter colors will give the webpage a regal look. The use of card-based design confines the content to a rectangular box, which reduces space and gives more impact to the user. Add various animations to it and you have a minimalist designed webpage that offers a better creative outlook.
7. Professionalization of Data
A lot of focus has been on data recently. The way you showcase the logistical statistics of your brand is going to determine how presentable your web page is. The use of charts such as pie charts and bar charts through the use of data visualization tools like Tableau, D3. JS and FusionCharts will greatly personify your website.
8. Virtual Reality
Virtual reality is one of the hottest technologies currently and implementing them in your webpage for an all round 360 degree experience is going to be the biggest trend in web design for 2017.
Currently there are various trends going on at any single point of time and listing every one of them is a tedious task. But these are among the hottest trends that are gonna be implemented in the upcoming year.