In a conversation with the client, we discussed web design trends. I am often asked about them and I feel that not everyone understands where web design trends come from and who invents them.
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What are web design trends
Web design trends - a fashion for certain things in the design of web resources. As it should be something fashionable, trends throw from one edge to the other. What are they like? Very different. Almost no one can say for sure what will be fashionable in 3-4 years. For example, in 2018, the Internet will go crazy on such trends:
The broken mesh.
Illustrations instead of photos
Free geometry
More animation
Video instead of text
Many fonts
When I learned the current trends, they seem logical. That's kind of where it went. But if you go back a few years, nothing foretold them. Except for some of the trendy chips that technology dictates today. For example, the popularization of smartphones has defined a long-term trend in the adaptability of sites.
Most trends do not pursue utilitarian goals. For example, video instead of text - this is a user token that makes the site clearer and easier to understand. But a broken grid, parallax or diagonal geometry - pure water design sophistication. Which, by the way, is not always useful.
Where do trends come from
To understand the mechanism of web design trends, you need to understand the psychology of web designers. These are specific specialists who do not like to repeat themselves at work and easily borrow ideas from each other. In such a favorable environment, novelties spread virulently.
Web designers love to be inspired by someone else's beautiful sites. And willingly copy the chips they like from there. Copying can be direct, but it can also happen with the development of an idea. A strong trend turns out when an interesting idea can be modernized and used not only in the situation in which it originally originated. Such ideas can change significantly in the process of "evolution". But there are also trends that roam from site to site virtually unchanged. Remember the burger menu. Burger" icon became an icon!
Who comes up with trends
Trends emerge spontaneously after random innovations in web design. The exception is the functional trends that follow technology. Now predict the AR/VR trend in web resources. This trend is due to intensive development in the direction of augmented and virtual reality. It is unlikely that such a dynamic industry as web design will be left behind.
Nobody comes up with trends. It is impossible to launch a trend, and nobody needs it. The trend is fashion, it's following a novelty. So, it's more interesting to know who's inventing all these novelties, which in some cases become mainstream.
New web design chips usually appear in talented designers and developers with a sufficient budget. Multinational corporations like to show off sites and have the financial capacity to do so. With proper skill, you can create a hype around the technology of your site, and it - already a stimulus for well-known brands. Some ideas are so liked by the public that they begin to imitate.
That is, all the interesting things that you have seen on the sites, someone once bungled for the first time. And hardly realized that he had defined a new trend in website design for years to come. Unlike high fashion, where fashion trends are produced behind the scenes by a handful of recognized couturiers, in web design has no absolute authority. Even well-known web designers are equally criticized with praise. The trend starts when web-designers start using the novelty. It is impossible to make them do it.
Nobody comes up with a trend. They arise by themselves. They invent technologies and any person in the topic can become the ancestor of the new web trend.
Do we have to follow trends
Actually, we discuss with clients not the emergence of trends (although such questions were asked to me), but what to do with it. Is it worth following trends? Or vice versa - in no way to be like the others, so as not to get lost in the doubts of their own kind?
We are trying to keep the golden mean in our work. If the trend likes us, the client and its use is optimal, then why not follow. But if the technology doesn't work or the client doesn't like it, then there's no need to fix the violence.
Trend, if we are discussing fashion trends rather than effective technology, it is a temporary phenomenon. We shouldn't dwell on them. There's less experimenting on information sites and more thinking about user-friendliness. In promo-sites, on the contrary, it is appropriate to stun special effects and catch the attention of the product.
Perhaps the most important thing to achieve in the trend sites - is a balance of necessity and opportunity. Today, web designers have an extensive toolkit and embody even part of it in one project - means overload the site. Look at the list of fashion trends in 2018 and imagine a site that combined them all. Theoretically possible, but in practice, it is better to limit one or two technologies and subordinate them to their task. And ideally, improve technology and possibly set a new trend...