Well, it’s been quite a year, hasn’t it? The web has continued to grow and diversify in 2015, so let’s take a look at some of the trends that have been everywhere in the last twelve months.
1. Interactive Animations
Everybody wants to discover something a little bit different when they visit a website and interactive animations have been a popular web design tool to help attract users in 2015. It’s a great way to help your brand stand out against competitors and remain in your visitor’s brain long after they’ve visited - all you need to do is create a site that gets people talking and you’re golden, and snappy animations have been all the rage this year.
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Cyclemon have a fantastic animated bike that changes model as you scroll through the site. It’s also a fab example of successful long scrolling (see point number three!)[/caption]
2. Typography Takes Centre Stage
We mentioned in our ‘Predicted Trends of 2015’ article this time last year that typography would come into play in a big way in 2015 - and it looks like we were right! Fonts have become more and more important in web design and brands are getting increasingly experimental when it comes to typography. We’ve loved seeing creativity come to the forefront this year, so it’s a trend we hope continues long into 2016 (though that’s a point for another post…).
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WordPress agency, AWESEM, have utilised bold typography to grab the viewer’s attention from the moment they click onto the site. [/caption]
3. Long Scrolling
Sometimes it was long scrolling and sometimes it felt more like longgggg scrolling but this was a trend that tied into many others - including responsive design. It’s rare that an unresponsive site is made these days, with mobile browsing on the up and up, and what better way to take advantage of the long scrolling that occurs on a smaller screen than to design your site around it?
Long scrolling is a great way to take your site visitor on a journey and tell them a story about your brand - and we all know how much of a buzzword ‘brand storytelling’ has been this year. However, there are some negatives to long scrolling, including increased load times and a lack of SEO opportunities.
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Free Range Designs is a great example of a fun, effective long scrolling site.[/caption]
4. Minimalism
Of course, minimalism had to feature somewhere. Websites are becoming cleaner and more clutter-free as the months go on, and gone are the days of sidebars crammed with ads and other bumf. This year has been all about slick layouts and minimal information, making it easier for people to digest the (potentially) hundreds of websites they view each day. Static sites have seen a boom this year, which ties in neatly with this minimalist trend.
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Digital Art Director, Marco Grimaldi, perfectly encapsulated this year’s minimalist trend with his business site, THENERO. [/caption]
5. Vivid Colour Palettes
You might think 2015’s clean, minimalist trends mean that colours have faded away into greys and blacks but, fortunately, that’s not the case. Websites have featured pared back design but colours have burst into the forefront with all the attention-grabbing colour palettes you can imagine. Many sites have combined vivid colours with experimental typography to particularly memorable effect.
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The French site, Panache, has combined a long scrolling site with an eye-catching colour palette. Two trends, one site. [/caption]
So there you have the top five web design trends of 2015, where typography and colours take centre stage and design becomes minimalist and interactive. We’re excited to see what 2016 has in store, so tune in later on this month for our take on which trends we’ll be seeing next year.
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