Top Web Design Trends Or What To Expect From 2017?

I have recently shared my thoughts on the UI/UX mobile trends for 2017 and today I’d like to talk about the web design trends and what will be popular in the coming 2017 year. It is hard to give such predictions but we can say that for sure about the things which are taking a back seat to the trends gaining ground.

Creating the smoothest UX (User Interface) remains the main task for all the designers, developers, marketing experts and product owners. Another core target is moving away from the set cliches and traditional solutions to the advantage of deeper and unique UX.

For achieving this you need to keep in mind the following things:

  • clean and polished UI which enables feedback from the user;
  • mobile friendly product working fine on all the devices;
  • the feel of quality and trustworthiness the user should get;
  • simplicity and transparency of the contents;
  • quick loading and sharp performance of the product.

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So let’s move on to my predictions!

1. Mobile-first Design

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For quite a while the creation of Desktop visual service (product, site) in the first turn and the mobile version coming only after that as the secondary objective have been a matter of course. With time there appeared lots of successful responsive design samples but still they are created based on the desktop version.

Today we are at a crucial point where this usual scheme will probably turn upside down and we will first have the mobile version before the desktop one. Now we already have clients who begin with the mobile app and the mobile version and the desktop part only after that.

Mobile friendliness stays as the priority in the quality UX must-haves. Consequently, the mobile-first design takes on.

2. High-resolution Custom-made Photos

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Photos reflecting reality, your product, and its production stages give you the clients’ credibility. Beautiful high-resolution pictures with exclusive contents are absolutely beyond competition while stock photos which are repeated in multiple projects destroy users’ confidence.

3. Videos & Animations

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Video and animation go on picking up popularity. The world becomes more and more action-packed and the time more and more limited, we are getting used to receiving information instantly. And here comes video as a perfect way to tell about your product in a quick, colorful and fun way. With animations, it is easy to present the product phase by phase, draw attention and leave a very good aftertaste.

4. Flat Design & Material Design

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Flat design showed up really successful in the recent years and it is still in trends. Flat icons, buttons, menu navigation are met in every other project (or even more often!).

5. Custom-made Illustrations

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Illustrations are one of the most effective ways to express your vision, demonstrate your uniqueness and draw the user’s attention. This is a really time-consuming and painstaking process demanding artistic talent but the result is worth it indeed.

6. Parallax Scrolling

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Parallax scrolling appeared as an alternative to the traditional and dull web design and opinions on it still vary. On one hand, the illusion of depth and interactivity of this effect are absolutely attractive and leave none indifferent. You can like or dislike it but the effect does not go unnoticed. But marketing specialists disagree with this opinion and say that parallax may cause problems with SEO due to the content being embedded mostly in graphics and hardly available for search engines.

You can have a look at a great example of parallax here.

7. Split Screen

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Another cool alternative to the traditional web-design combining content and graphic, which results in making both marketing experts and designers happy. See a sample here.

8. Irregular Grid & Chaos

On of the top trends in 2016 with lightness, air and chaos closely intertwined. Using this approach you get absolutely marvelous results really exciting to look at. But what if this trend is seasonal just like a fashion for a new trend? I am waiting for 2017 to learn it!

8. More 3D/Immersive Design

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On of the top trends in 2016 with lightness, air and chaos closely intertwined. Using this approach you get absolutely marvelous results really exciting to look at. But what if this trend is seasonal just like a fashion for a new trend? I am waiting for 2017 to learn it!

Conclusion

So these are my predictions for top design trends in 2017. Time will tell if I am right or wrong and will be interesting to check the results in a year. And no matter the trends which are popular at the moment we, designers, still have our cameras, inspiration collections, SVG images, and Google fonts which make our work easier and more creative together with lots of other features which we will discuss in the next post!

Viktoria Kolomiets UI/UX Designer