Design trends for 2010: Web design trends for 2010

Dear visitor: Please keep in mind that this post is originally from Vibor Cipan's personal blog, the name of which we eventually adopted as our company name together with its conveniently-named URL. We're keeping the posts on our official company blog for all the subscribers to Vibor's blog who have read and commented on his previous posts. Please be aware that this post represents Vibor's personal thinking few years ago and doesn't necessarily represent the opinions of the UX Passion as a company today. 

From the visual and aesthetics aspect, web design trends in 2010 will be shaped by the influences from 2009. In this article 5 major trends regarding the web design are covered. From oversized headers which are serving as new kind of splash screens to minimalism which is being supported by typography. See what’s to come in 2010.

Introduction

After I’ve shared with you web development trends for 2010, it is time to take a look at the web design trends and approaches for 2010. How our websites and blogs are going to look in 2010? From oversized headers and huge imagery (footers will join in the game) to typography and minimalism… Web in 2010 will be interesting and dynamic place. See what is to come…

Web design trends for 2010

1. Oversized headers and huge images

We still all do remember splash screens and intros. “Click here to continue” calls and similar web elements of the late 90’s and early in 2000’s are still fresh in our minds. Just when we thought they were gone for good – they are back – splash screens of tomorrow. Don’t be afraid – I’m not talking about some retro comeback – I’m talking about huge images serving as headers as a design trend.

Having oversized logos and headers will certainly be one of the top mainstream trends during 2010. Often they will occupy almost all visible space – on netbooks and other devices with lower screen resolutions they will certainly look like a splash screens of 90’s, but they will serve their main (questionable) purpose – they will help (force?) your visitors to remember you.

Flash or Silverlight headers? No way! Use crisp, bright and original images. Yes – this means you should avoid those typical stock imagery of smiling faces, businessman shaking hands and all those, you know, politically correct images where you need to have people from all continents sitting at the same desk. And smiling while looking at you. Or maybe they are looking at their, obviously hilarious and funny, PowerPoint presentation.

Since hand drawn imagery and sketches are also going to be popular during 2010 – you might want to investigate how well they can fit with your huge and oversized header. Play with it and enjoy it.

Oh, and regarding the Flash, Silverlight and other RIA platforms, they will certainly be important but more on them can be read in the following article dealing with the web development trends during 2010.

2. Typography in focus

Gone are the ages of Arial, Verdana and Tahoma dominating the web. OK, they are still here but certainly – typography is coming in a big style on web. Don’t get stuck with the “web safe fonts” – explore, be brave and embrace some new ideas and approaches.

Take a look at our friends at UXBooth.com – they are playing with some cool fonts – and they are not the only guys around. A List Apart is also great example.

How to use all those cool fonts on web? Technologies like sIFR and Cufon (which is basically a sIFR alternative) are using JavaScript and Flash to enable some typography richness. However, better choice is using the @FONT-FACE implementation. It’s supported within Firefox 3.5 and you can rely on that and reference the fonts not installed on user machines. Great article on @font-face element is here on craigmod.com so go there and enjoy.

And guess who is (again) late for this piece of fun in the browser space? Firefox? Safari? Opera? Guess again…

3. Minimalism

Together with rich typography comes the minimalism. This trend comes and goes every once in a while but it seems that during the 2010 minimalism is going to be one of the more prominent trends regarding the web design.

Lot of whitespaces, smart and clean usage of fonts, carefully positioned minimalist imagery will be main parts of this trend.

This also includes (usually) white backgrounds and spacious layouts. Using the light backgrounds means that experimenting with typography and somewhat colourful and bold colour palettes can be very rewarding.

For some reason I tend to connect this kind of design, this minimalistic approach, with the Scandinavian design doctrine – not just regarding the web but rather interior design and furniture design as well. Simple, yet powerful. Effective and just exactly to the point. It’s art. Don’t mess with minimalism unless you know what you are doing.

My favourite example? LukeW has just redesigned his website in this minimalist and clean style and I LOVE it.

4. Rich and oversized footers

This is not really 2010 trend – it’s been around during the 2009 but I’m betting that it will litteraly explode during the 2010. Well, with huge and oversized headers, who would think that footers will stay thin and anaemic?

In the 2010 this is going to be a battlefield of exaggeration. You can’t find a place to put something on the home page? Hell, just drop it in the footer. But seriously – rich footers can be great.

Use them as your special places where you offer some added value to the web site visitors. Simplistic site map, your links and feeds from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media are also good ideas. List of most popular blog articles, contact info? All is good but be careful and don’t go over the edge.

As a rule of thumb – you can host a bit more personal items and elements in footer and those which are not of the utmost importance to the rest of the site.

5. Newspaper and magazine layouts

This trend is going to be especially strong within the blogosphere. Typical, corporate websites will hardly venture into this area, but bloggers – oh, they just seem to love it.

Number of WordPress themes is already available allowing you to use both newspaper and magazine layouts for your blogs.

Expect this trend to grow even stronger during 2010. And all this is not here just by an accident. People are used to traditional media like newspapers and paper magazines. Today, they are migrating to web and certainly affecting other web sites and web in general. Organizing the content in a single page is, however, challenging.

Too many pictures, headlines and information in general can be confusing and distracting. Therefore, information architecture will also be extremely important with respect to this. As always, be careful with the implementation – but this can be very rewarding especially, as I’ve said, for blogs and traditional newspapers and magazines making their home on the web.

Looking for more?

Looking for more web development trends for 2010? Take a look at article Design trends for 2010: Web development trends for 2010 and Things to Think about When Designing Your Website to stay ahead of the curve.

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