It’s the start of the new year, and we’ve been reflecting over the design trends of 2015 and looking for inspiration for the year ahead.
We’ve been scrolling through plenty of blogs within the new year, each predicting which colour combinations and styles we’ll be feasting our eyes upon during 2016, here’s our rundown of some of the trends we’re looking forward to:
Rose Quartz and Serenity
These two colours are the official Pantone colours of 2016. According to Pantone, “When joined together, these colours demonstrate an inherent balance between a warmer embracing rose tone and the cooler tranquil blue, reflecting connection and wellness as well as a soothing sense of order and peace.”
Functionality
According to many online blogs, function will offset aesthetics in the balance of web design. Users are becoming more aware as to when something doesn’t work properly on a website. Recent changes in Google’s algorithms and customer behaviour data all point in the same direction, and that is that your website needs to load fast and be easy to use.
Rich but subtle animations
As the style of web design is flattening out, the aesthetics of websites are starting to look more and more alike. One way designers have been trying to help make their sites stand apart from the crowd is through the use of rich, clever but subtle animations throughout. GIFS, everyday animations and interactions are going to become the norm.
Stock photography
2016 will be the year we stop picking the same stock photography over and over again, and instead take to the pencils to create our content which is perfect for our uses. Funnily enough, last year was the year we saw hundreds of stock websites advertising accessible stock content – it’s now easier than ever to get the media you need very quickly. This year, however, expect to see more illustrations, unique photography and videos.
Almost flat design
We spotted this tip from Amber Leigh Turner at ‘The Next Web’
“With responsive design pretty much taking over the Web, expect flat design to continue to be a dominant design aesthetic throughout 2016. Not only will there be websites that launch with flat designs, those sites who’ve already embraced the flat design trend will look to make things even flatter. Take for example Google’s logo. The company changed its logo to make it more flat (losing the bevels) and changed the font. It found that a cleaner sans-serif font for its logo helped cut the size of the logo file used on sites by more than half. Google also found that it was easier to read on smaller devices. This includes updates to logos (like Google), icons, images, and other elements that maybe didn’t get fully flattened the first time. You can thank the drive and determination to get our websites to load faster and snappier, weigh less, and get content to viewers more effectively.”
–
A few of the blogs we turned to for research:
